"Thomas A. Easton - Alien Resonance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

impulse to protest. They needed to know. He wanted to know.
Ybarra tried to get a grip on the stone, but it was too fat for the small tool.
And when he tried to gouge it, the metal simply slid off, harmlessly. Alec
almost laughed with relief. His sudden rush of confidence even let him nod when
Ellen suggested they try the geologist's hammer lying on a shelf above the
bench. But the stone continued to seem invulnerable.
"And it looks just the same," Ellen murmured. "I wish we could get it under the
scope, but it's too big. Maybe the SEM." Alec had heard of that. The school's
scanning electron microscope could provide a strikingly three-dimensional image
of almost any microscopic structure. It could also measure the energies of


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reflected electrons and so detect an object's constituent elements.
Ybarra handed the stone back to Alec. "I think we'll have to. But first we'll
need a bigger scope chamber. The shards--well, we can break them to fit." He
glanced toward Ellen, who had wandered toward the window. "We can probably
borrow one from Boston."
Alec turned to follow his gaze as Ellen waved at them. "Hey, come here. Look at
this."
They crossed the room. Ellen pointed out the window. A class period was ending,
and students were spilling out of buildings. Some were gathering on the lawn,
forming two broad circles.
"Looks like a folk dance," said Alec.
Ellen leaned close to Ybarra as he answered. "That's just what it is, I think.
Of a sort."
More students gathered, some joining the circles to make them wider, others
forming clumps of observers to one side. As Alec and his friends watched, the
students in the circles raised their hands. Each one held a worrystone.
The observers began to clap. The circles began to move, counterrotating so that,
for a moment, each student in one circle would face each one in the other. As
they passed, the students knocked their stones. The clacks reverberated across
the lawn and through the window, joining with the claps to define a cosmic
rhythm.
"Efficiency," said Ybarra. "I'll bet there's an art--or dance--student behind
that."
"How about phys ed?" asked Ellen.
"Business?" rejoined Ybarra with a snort. But despite the lightness of his tone,
he kept watching. In the end, he was rewarded by hearing three Rringg!!s and
seeing three pairs leave the crowd, clasping hands. One of the pairs was two
young men, an engineering major with a handcomp in a holster on his belt and an
English student with a brace of colorfully jacketed novels under one arm. They
stared at each other as if they had discovered some great commonality.
Alec felt a pang of envy, much stronger than he had felt the night before,
watching television. As Ellen and Ybarra turned away from the window, their arms
aligned but not yet clasping hands, he thought they felt the same. Too, he felt
a vague regret that Franklin had no Di, no Ellen, with whom to share what
already seemed the dawning of a new age. The regret was tempered with relief