"A. C. Doyle - The Disintegration Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at
me. 'It was in the course of your somewhat fatuous remarks concerning the recent Saurian remains discovered
in the Solenhofen Slates. You began a paragraph with the words: "Professor G. E. Challenger, who is among
our greatest living scientistsтИТтИТ"'

'Well, sir?' I asked.

'Why these invidious qualifications and limitations? Perhaps you can mention who these other predominant
scientific men may be to whom you impute equality, or possibly superiority to myself?'




The Disintegration Machine and Other Stories 1
 The Disintegration Machine and Other Stories


'It was badly worded. I should certainly have said: "Our greatest living scientist,"' I admitted. It was after all
my own honest belief. My words turned winter into summer.

'My dear young friend, do not imagine that I am exacting, but surrounded as I am by pugnacious and
unreasonable colleagues, one is forced to take one's own part. SelfтИТassertion is foreign to my nature, but I
have to hold my ground against opposition. Come now! Sit here! What is the reason of your visit?'

I had to tread warily, for I knew how easy it was to set the lion roaring once again. I opened McArdle's letter.
'May I read you this, sir? It is from McArdle, my editor.'

'I remember the man тИТтИТ not an unfavourable specimen of his class.'

'He has, at least, a very high admiration for you. He has turned to you again and again when he needed the
highest qualities in some investigation. That is the case now.'

'What does he desire?' Challenger plumed himself like some unwieldy bird under the influence of flattery. He
sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and
his big grey eyes, halfтИТcovered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me. He was huge in all that he did,
and his benevolence was even more overpowering than his truculence.

'I'll read you his note to me. He says:

"Please call upon our esteemed friend, Professor Challenger, and ask for his coтИТoperation in the following
circumstances. There is a Latvian gentleman named Theodore Nemor living at White Friars Mansions,
Hampstead, who claims to have invented a machine of a most extraordinary character which is capable of
disintegrating any object placed within its sphere of influence. Matter dissolves and returns to its molecular or
atomic condition. By reversing the process it can be reassembled. The claim seems to be an extravagant one,
and yet there is solid evidence that there is some basis for it and that the man has stumbled upon some
remarkable discovery.

"I need not enlarge upon the revolutionary character of such an invention, nor of its extreme importance as a
potential weapon of war. A force which could disintegrate a battleship, or turn a battalion, if it were only for a
time, into a collection of atoms, would dominate the world. For social and for political reasons not an instant