"James E. Gunn - Breaking Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

oxygen bottle in his hand, and had frozen in his tracks at the sharp sound Ives had made. Johnny had
whipped around as if the grunt had been a lion's roar. His back was to the bulkhead, his lean, long frame
tensed for fight or flight. It was indescribable, Ives' grunt, and it was the only sound which could have had
such an effect on such a variety of menтАФthe same shocked immobility.
Ives sat over his Communications desk as if hypnotized by it. He moved one great arm forward, almost
reluctantly, and turned a knob.

A soft, smooth hum filled the room. "Carrier," said Ives. [Pg 13]

Then the words came. They were English words, faultlessly spoken, loud and clear and precise. They
were harmless words, pleasant words even.

They were: "Men of Earth! Welcome to our planet."

The voice hung in the air. The words stuck in the silence like insects wriggling upon a pin. Then the voice
was gone, and the silence was complete and heavy. The carrier hum ceased. With a spine-tingling brief
blaze of high-frequency sound, Hoskins' oxygen-bottle hit the steel deck.




Then they all began to breathe again.

"There's your farmers, Johnny," said Paresi.

"Knight to bishop's third," said Hoskins softly.

"What's that?" demanded Johnny.

"Chess again," said the Captain appreciatively. "An opening gambit."

Johnny put a cigarette to his lips, tried his lighter. "Damn. Gimme a light, Ives."

Ives complied, saying over his big shoulder to the Captain, "In case you wondered, there was no fix on
that. My direction-finders indicate that the signal came simultaneously from forty-odd transmitters placed
in a circle around the ship which is their way of saying 'I dunno'."

The Captain walked to the view bubble in front of the console and peered around. He saw the valley, the
warm light of mid-afternoon, the too-green slopes and the blue-green distances. Trees, rocks, a
balancing bird.

"It doesn't work," muttered Johnny.

The Captain ignored him. "'Men of Earth....'" he quoted. "Ives, they've gotten into Survey's squeak-box
and analyzed its origin. They know all about us!"

"They don't because they can't," said Ives flatly. "Survey traverses those boxes through second-order
space. They materialize near a planet and drop in. No computation on earth or off it could trace their
normal-space trajectory, let alone what happens in the second-order condition. The elements the box is
made of are carefully averaged isotopic forms that could have come from any of nine galaxies we know