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

'Sara Francis and William Strassen,' I said.
'They're in the plot?' said Reckman.
'Not in a million years and ten thousand cataclysms and disasters,' I said.
The General went on sitting there. I wondered what he thought of me.
Reckman after all had his job to do. It was his business to be suspicious. It was that kind of job. I
never wanted it.
'There have been famous scientific frauds,' he said. 'Like the case of the Piltdown Man.'
Bridger turned to him and said: 'Drop it, Reckman.'
So we began to think again. I did. The General had apparently finished thinking.
He began talking to me.
'You know the competition is keen for the space-ride, Major. You might just go back there someday.
You aren't dismissed from that work. It was just that we needed someone. You were riding fairly high.
You might have got a flight in a time or two. But your whole background is taken into consideration, for
instance whether you volunteer for things or not. But this isn't like that.'
'Sir,' I said.
'What I mean is that you don't have to volunteer,' he said.
I thought about it. It was hard to believe in that range of mountains that had shown in the
photographs. They had looked unreal, like the Himalayas. I found my thoughts tending to Sara Francis.
She was real. I wondered about William Strassen and whether he was married, and just what it meant to
two people to work together on a thing like that, and what a stranger could do to cut him out.
'I volunteer,' I said.
General Bridger grunted. Later, when I knew him better, I found he did that in a bar when anyone put
a glass before him, or at meals when anyone put food on his plate.
'Congratulations,' said Reckman dryly.
'Let's go,' the General said. He began to drive the car down in the direction of the laboratory and the
synchrotron.
'It could be an atomic war,' he said on the way. "The question is if even an atomic war is big enough
to create the situation that is visible in the cave. Or it could be a local disaster. If it's a local disaster, the
Senator's right. We'll have to clear the area. But if it's an atomic war the question is who hit us. With this
instrument we may get advance warning. We can do more than that. We can get our own blow in first.'
I turned round in the seat and Reckman looked at me uneasily. I looked back at him. We both felt
there was some doubt about the General's analysis, but we did not know what. We did not speak.
 Down at the synchrotron we called for Strassen and Sara Francis. They met us, Strassen coming
forward. It seemed he had heard of the General and his connection with the affair, but not actually met
him. I performed the introductions.
'We have decided to send a man,' the General said. It was not strictly true. Galbraith and the Senator
and the Secretary were still arguing about it, and all they could be arguing about was a recommendation
that would have to go elsewhere. But the General had decided and Strassen seemed to accept that. He
nodded.
'Just how can we send a man?' the General said. 'What do you need? What help can we give you? It
may take time for agreement to come through, but we can get everything prepared and ready. We can
begin now, and then when the word comes we can go.'
I thought Strassen might make objections to the pushing, aggressive service way. I knew that handling
the synchrotron was not like loading a gun and pulling the trigger and firing it. But he took it well and told
the General 'Come!' and led us into the workings.
They had a small work room with apparatus-assembly benches adjacent to the laboratory, and he
took us to that. There was just room for us amid the various items of apparatus and instruments in
process of construction but Strassen took us to the main bench where an intricate and beautiful machine
was being made and already half finished.
Its basis was a large transparent sphere of hard plastic, about four feet six in diameter but at present