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

design, just did not function. You see? A lesser man would have acted in a state of panic. He would have
said: With so much money already spent, and so much expected of us, let's do something, anything, to
make it work. But not Galbraith. He stood in the big, shielded underground laboratory that you'll see
down there. He said: So this is new. There is some principle here that we do not fully understand. Keep
everything as it is and launch a programme. The interesting thing is just why it does not work.'
I had arrived at Lake Valley the night before, driving up the winding valley road and seeing the
university buildings tinted pink in the evening sunlight on the hillside. I had not known what it was at the
head of the valley and had had no idea it was connected with the university. I had thought it was a power
station with the big conduits bringing down water for the hydro-electric power, and that the rest had
something to do with industry. I did not know a research tool could be so big. I had no acquaintance with
a proton-synchrotron.
Strassen was Galbraith's chief research assistant. And Sara Francis, hovering around him in her long
white coat, looked at him earnestly.
'Tell him,' she said. 'Tell him what it meant to a man of Galbraith's reputation that a
hundred-million-dollar research tool that he had designed, and for which atomic scientists throughout the
world were waiting, was standing idle. Tell him how they said he was incompetent and should never have
been given the project in the first place, and how Galbraith stood firm and said: "There is a basic scientific
principle here, and something far more fundamental to be discovered with all this machinery failing to do
what it is designed and supposed to do, than we could ever hope to discover if it were working and firing
its particles at target atoms and performing such little tricks as turning lead to gold." '
I looked at what they called the proton feeder source in the hewn rock tunnel, and at the great array
of conduits and sectioned tubes and cables that led away in straight-line diminished distance towards the
proton-synchrotron housing at the far end. I said:
'Just how?'
They wore puzzled expressions, turning to look at me almost suspiciously, unable to believe that I
could be so stupid, so I told them: 'Galbraith tried to tell me after the man who met me here took me to
him last night. He was too advanced for me. As soon as he began to talk about this I could not
understand him.'
They looked dubious and led me to the proton feeder source, which I understood was designed to
create a rarified ion cloud at the end of the long white tube that ran the length of the tunnel in a sequence
of jointed sections.
'You know what a proton is?' Sara Francis said impatiently. She treated me at high school level for a
moment. 'The nucleus of a hydrogen atom?' Then she looked at me inquisitively, smiled momentarily and
turned her impatience on herself: 'We use protons as the fundamental particle, as the missile of our
research tool. In effect this is a gun to shoot them forwards.'
William Strassen put his hand on my arm again and began to lead me down the tunnel towards the
synchrotron.
'We are following the route the protons travel.' He showed me section after section of the tube.
'These forces are all exerted on their tiny object. The protons are attracted forwards by a charge that
passes just ahead of them like the curl of a breaking wave. They fall. They fall through an electrostatic
field that has the order of a hundred million volts. Each section of this tube is an accelerator in itself.'
'A hundred million volts exerted on the proton's tiny mass,' Sara Francis said, 'gives an answer that
begins to approach the speed of light.'
v Ahead, the tube passed through a barrier that hid its destination. We went round the barrier by
steps and a passageway in the rock. We came out into a chamber or curving tunnel. To right and left the
ends bent away and it was obvious that, deep underground, they would meet to form a perfect circle. It
was not a tunnel in effect, but a great hall with something massive in the centre.
The proton tube entered through the barrier and ran into a metallic housing that curved around the
centre.
 'This is where the power goes,' Strassen said. "The power to run a town. It's not exaggerating to say