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

Phyllis Bradley flicked her gaze across a console and nodded in satisfaction. "Respiration simulation holding
at twenty-one. Epidermal reading, 98.6. Internal lubricant flow, normal; full circulation. Pulse registering
normal."
Jerry moved to the android's side again. It lay unmoving except for the rhythmic rise and fall of the chest in
a normal breathing pattern. The eyes remained shut. The flawless skin and lipless mouth made it seem
suddenly alien and disquieting. Jerry tentatively reached out to touch the android. The plastiskin was warm,
but far too smooth. He had almost expected a human reactionтАФper-haps a ticklish drawing away. There
was none, of course; he pulled back his hand, vaguely uncomfortable.
"It's doing nicely on its own." Michaels looked up in time to see Jerry withdraw his hand, and he frowned.
"Have you met a problem there, Robinson?"
"No, sir. When its chest started moving, it startled me, that's all."
Gorlov, the Russian, shook his head. "Strange you should be alarmed. This great toy of oursтАФyou were
most prominent in constructing it. You knew what it should do."
"Maybe I didn't really believe it would work."
Gorlov appeared surprised but had no chance to com-ment. Geoffrey B. Darro entered the security lab. He
was dressed like the others, in a white clean suit, wearing the obligatory identification tag and radiation-level
badge. Jerry always knew when Darro was around, even if he hadn't seen him come in. Everyone
instinctively fell silent and waited to be spoken to.
Darro was a man few people questioned. If they did, they seldom received answers. There probably was a
dos-sier on himтАФsomewhereтАФbut most of what was known about him was only what Darro himself cared
to reveal. Physically, he was a rugged, broad-shouldered man, still showing the easy, fluid motions of a
well-conditioned athlete. He might have been fiftyтАФthere was a little gray in his crisp, dark hair.
Intellectually, he was an accom-plished man with a broad grasp of history, politics, eco-nomics, international
strategies, and interplay on all levels. He was fluent in five languages and unyielding in all of them.
Personally, he seemed to have no friends, no as-sociates, no soft spots or weaknesses. At times Jerry was
sure that Darro was made of harder steel than the android. Darro was the official head of the five-nation
Project Questor primarily because he was the one individual on whom they could all agree. He had been
hired by many nations in the pastтАФsometimes to overthrow a govern-ment, other times to save one. He
never broke his word or his contract, and any country which employed him never regretted it. Geoffrey B.
Darro's integrity was as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Darro's eyes flicked around the room, taking it in with one look. The others went back to their monitoring
rather self-consciously. The project chief crossed to the cosmetol-ogy section, where Dr. Chen was using a
computer screen on which color slides flashed up. The finely detailed pic-tures were followed by complete
information on the mold-ing of features, skin pigmentation, hair implantation, and on other cosmetic
instructions.
"Decided on the features you'll give it, Doctor?"
Chen looked around at the big man standing behind him. "Naturally, I would prefer Asian, Mr. Darro. I see
great beauty in the shape and color of my people's faces." He smiled ruefully. "But when we hooked up its
eye units, they turned a rather occidental blue."
Darro grunted. "Apparently Vaslovik had his own ideas on what he wanted."
"One of his many reputations," Chen said. He turned to the computer and keyed in a new diagram.
The screen obediently displayed a large color schematic of the mechanism, which served as the android's
eyes. The rounded front surface resembled an anatomical rendering of a healthy human eye. Chen tapped it
with a finger.
"The part of it we will see looks remarkably human and will probably have normal eye movements,
secretions, and so on."
Chen pushed another switch, and the diagram changed to reveal the complex microelectronic structure
behind the rounded front area. Chen shook his head. "But exactly how the eye mechanism operates is still
guesswork." He switched the screen diagram again, bringing in a closer, more detailed view of the delicate
works. "We have never seen half the micro units Vaslovik used here. Or in the other components, for that