"D. C. Fontana - Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fontana D C)

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Jerry Robinson felt no more for the object lying on the instrument assembly pallet than he felt for any other
com-puter assembly he had constructed in the past seven years. The fact that this computer had the shape
of a male human being in every particular had little bearing on the work he did. He glanced up from a
monitoring device to look at the object for which an entire top-security lab had been built.
It had an average buildтАФabout five feet eleven inches and not overly muscular. Still, heavy metal straps
held the arms and legs in a spread-eagle position on the assembly pallet. Jerry could not think of it as
anything other than itтАФthe android Emil Vaslovik had left for a five-nation science combine to build. But
the thick metal restraints had been insisted upon by Michaels, the British scientist.
"It resembles an ordinary human body," he had said. "But there is a tempered steel framework under that
plastiskin and an energy source to give it power beyond all human capacity. If anything goes wrong in the
lab, I want to be assured it won't break loose."
So Michaels had been assured, and the android had been strapped down. Jerry saw no menace in the
android. Perhaps he had worked on its component parts too long. To him it appeared to be only a
man-shaped thing with sleek, hairless skin and no details at all to make it seem human. The baldhead had
basic nose and ear shapes in the proper places, but the mouth was only a slitтАФlipless. The eyes had been
inserted, and the thin plastiskin eyelids were closed; but there were no brows or lashes. The body had no
nipples or navel. Nowhere were there any of the blemishes, scars, wrinkles, or other tiny flaws that human
bodies carry.
Jerry thought ruefully of the long scar on his left shin, the result of a childhood bicycle accident. It could be
covered, if he had enough vanity about it to go to a plastic surgeon and go through the skin grafts. One up
for the android, he thought. Any scars it acquired could be neatly repaired in a matter of minutes with a
heat molder.
Michaels' voice broke in on his thoughts. "Ready to disconnect?"
Jerry stepped closer to the android's side and scanned the contact points of the control and readout wires
that led from the exposed circuitry to a telemetry unit over-head. The flap of plastiskin had been pulled back
at the right side of the abdomen, laying open the intricate and astonishingly small servo-units, electronic
relays, and mi-croscopic transistors that would, supposedly, bring the android to life. There was doubt, in
some quarters that the project would succeed. Most of the android's com-ponents had been designed by
Emil Vaslovik before he inexplicably vanished three years ago, and not one of the scientists or technicians
in the room could explain what half of them were or how they worked. Or were supposed to work. The
acid test would come in a few moments.
Satisfied that the contacts had been doing their job, Jerry nodded to Dr. Michaels. "Ready to disconnect,
sir."
"Disconnect it from the lab controls."
Jerry began to remove the leads, his deft fingers moving with the skill of one whose craft is both instinctive
and well learned. A bluish pulsating glow came from a power unit deep inside the android. The color
intensified as Jerry removed the fine wires one by one.
The scientists and technicians hovered over control and monitoring devices as the young microelectronics
engineer worked. Their ID tags identified several as Nobel Prize winners in their fields. The white "clean
suits" gave them all a uniform, bulky look, except for Phyllis Bradley, whose spectacularly contoured figure
could not have been defeated by an old-fashioned diver's suit. She was also one of the Nobel Prize winners.
Jerry completed the disconnections and stepped back a pace. Suddenly the android's chest heaved; Jerry
caught his breath, startled. The rise and fall of the machine's chest steadied into a regular pattern, and Jerry
became aware of the voices routinely reporting.
"Heartbeat simulation steady at eighty." This from Michaels.