"Rex Gordon - The Time Factor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Rex)

Rex Gordon
THE TIME FACTOR

Version 1.0
Copyright ┬й Ace Books Inc. 1962

CHAPTER ONE
We were coming out of the rock tunnels from the synchrotron, out into the morning sunlight and the view
across Lake Valley from below the cliff face.
A man came across from the apron where we had parked the cars. He walked between Sara and
Strassen and put his hand upon my shoulder.
He said: 'Conference, Judgen.'
I said: 'What conference?'
'Galbraith will be at the conference,' he said, 'and so will all the important people.' He took me to his
car.
He was the man who had welcomed me, stepping out from nowhere, when I had arrived at the
university the previous night. Maybe it was because he had not had time then that he had not explained
who he was and why.
The 'important people' apparently did not include Strassen or Sara Francis. They were left behind
when he closed his car door and he started it and drove it towards the road that wound up the valley side
to the university.
'Curiosity is frowned on in this part of the country,' I said. 'And people don't ask questions.'
'What do you want to know?' he said.
'Your name,' I said. 'Or, failing that, if I'm to take orders from you, your rank and status.'
'Carl Reckman,' he said. 'Military intelligence.'
He put the car into the bends on the winding road.
'What has military intelligence to do with this?' I said.
'This work is being done under an appropriation for military intelligence now,' he said. 'It has to be
done under some appropriation. You ask the Senator.'
'What Senator?'
He said: 'You'll meet him.'
There was a helicopter parked on the grass between the buildings of the university. There were also
two large cars with uniformed drivers. I wondered if the government was moving in.
Out of the car, Reckman led me up a flight of marble steps. 'They're holding it in the projection room,'
he said. 'There's that about a university. It has the places.'
A man at the door looked closely even at Reckman before he let us in. Inside, the lights were on in a
room with a projector and a screen. I saw Galbraith's great grey head even before I saw his hunched and
shambling untidy figure. There were three other men, and one in General's uniform.
 It is hard to describe the impression Galbraith had made on me. We had had scientists, engineers and
technicians of all descriptions at the rocket base, and I had thought he would be one of them. He wasn't.
It was not a difference in quality. He was a different kind of man. In some ways he was more homely and
less restrained. At other times, while he went on using the simplicities of ordinary speech, you found he
was losing you in the most complicated matters which he all too obviously expected you easily to
understand.
'Here are Reckman and Major Judgen now,' he said. He looked at his projectionist who was fixing a
film in his machine. 'Shall we put the lights out? We may as well begin.'
There was a slight delay while the introductions were performed.
'Major, this is Secretary Stephens,' Reckman said. 'The Major is our volunteer, Mr. Secretary. If
anyone does this thing, he will. Senator, this is Major Howard JudgenтАж'
I was saluting. I had recognized General Bridger. It was not from prior personal acquaintance. I had