"Haldeman, Joe - Seven and the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

I'd noticed that myself. "You flew a flying saucer through Westchester and parked it in her garage?"
"No lights," Seven said. "Four in the morning."
"It's not a flying saucer," Lydia added. "It's a big black sphere, like a huge bowling ball."
"And it's broken down," I said. "You can orbit Earth, slip down, and tuck it into someone's garage, but you can't go from star to star. Is that it?"
"He could go to other stars," Lydia said, "but it would take a long time."
"I could reach the star nearest here in about twelve years. But it would take nearly a hundred centuries for me to get home that way. Most of my friends would be dead."
"It's like if you drove to California," Lydia said, "and your car broke down there and you only had first gear. You could drive back to New York, but it makes more sense to look for a mechanic."
"But there are not mechanics in this part of California," Seven said. "I have to find some intelligentЧwhat was that word?"
"Blacksmith."
"Чblacksmith, and see whether he can fix it under my guidance. But I'm not a mechanic either. I know a little about the basic principles involved, but that's all." He rested his chin on one bony knee. "I'm not even sure how to take it apart safely."
"What's its power source?"
"Simple fusion of hydrogen atoms."
"That could be dangerous, all right."
"No, that's not what bothers me. It's the part that makes distances smaller. You're not supposed to use that near a planet."
"Makes distances smaller?"
"Yes. If you used it near a planet, it would make part of the planet very small. I think the rest of it would come apart, stretching."
"How does it work?"
"It makes distances smaller, so you don't have to travel as long."
I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them he was still there. "I understand that part. What I mean is, do you know how it makes distances smaller?"
"The process?"
"That's right."
"This is why I need a scientist." He daintily took a sugar cube from the bowl on the tray and rubbed it between his palms. It disappeared. "All I know is that you tell the ship where you want to go, and it tells you how long it will take. You can stay awake or sleep. When you are ready, it goes."
"You must know some scientists," Lydia said.
"Yeah. A magician, too."
"I don't want many people to know I'm here. Not until I can leave quickly."
I had to admit that made sense. "Why don't you do this," Lydia said. "Pretend it's for a story.... Ask some scientists whether there's some rationale for a drive like this thing you made up. You must do that sort of thing all the time."
"Yeah." Like the physicist who told me my antigravity device violated the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, and natural resources. Sort of condescending. "Worth a try, I guess."
"I could show you the vehicle," Seven said. Now that did sound interesting. I helped him to his feet, and Lydia took us around to the back door of the garage.
It really wasn't too helpful. The spaceship looked like a prop for a low-budget TV movie. A featureless flat black sphere about eight feet in diameter. Seven said something to it and it clam-shelled open. It looked pretty low-rent inside, too. Just a comfy-looking settee in a small round room wallpapered with shabby red satin. There were three gray boxes under the settee that he identified as the fusion drive, the "shrinker," and a life-support center. He didn't know how to get the boxes open.
I couldn't really fault him for that. I've been riding the subway all my life, but if one stopped dead I wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to get it started again.
That analogy stuck in my mind as I rattled home in the last train back to the city. Suppose the subway broke down and when I got out there was no one around but a bunch of Stone Age savages. Or even colonial Americans, say. Well, it's run by an electrical motor. You knowЧelectricity? Ben Franklin?
Maybe somewhere in the city there was someone fiddling with the equivalent of Leyden jars and kites and keys. Even if I could find him, could we turn him into a metaphorical subway repairman?
The next morning I called Lydia and she confirmed that it hadn't been a dream, hallucination, or joke. So I took a jigger's worth out of my own private life-support center and splashed my way through the freezing rain to the public library.
There's a section there that has all the publications of the New York Academy of Sciences. I scanned titles and skimmed a few articles, looking for people who had an interest in exotic propulsion systems. I discarded a few names as being too prominent, figuring they'd have had too much experience with screwballs. By afternoon I had three names to call. One turned out to be on sabbatical, one was openly contemptuous, and one was Lazlo Crane.
Dr. Crane is an assistant professor in the aerospace engineering department of NYU. He had written a paper with a new angle on using black holes for interstellar flight. I couldn't even understand the one-paragraph summary, but the title was clear enough. His office wasn't too far, and I was out of phone change, so I slogged on over.
He looked sort of like a Lazlo. Tall and skinny, with a wisp of beard; prematurely bald, squinting through thick glasses. He was working on a crossword puzzle, standing up with the newspaper folded on top of a filing cabinet. Like Thomas Wolfe used to do, writing, though Wolfe was beefier and not quite Lazlo's seven feet.
"What's a five-letter word meaning `sanctuary'?" he asked without looking up. "The middle letter's a k, I'm sure of it."
"Sekos," I said, and spelled it.
"Fits." He scribbled it in, using a pencil. Amateur. "Do I know you?" He peered at me over his glasses.
I introduced myself and he gave the rare response: "The science fiction writer?"
I replied modestly in the affirmative. He shook hands and said, "Used to read your stuff," without elaborating. Too busy, I supposed, what with all the space drives and crossword puzzles.
He sat down and nodded in the direction of the only other chair. "Can I do something for you?"
"I read your paper in the last Academy Proceedings. I thought maybe you could help me with a problem."
"A science problem? I thought you stayed away from that. Sort of made it up as you went along."
Pleasant fellow. "Trying to clean up my act," I said, and outlined what I knew of Seven's drive. It didn't take long, of course.
He pulled on his lower lip a couple of times and rubbed his beard out of shape. "Why do you need an explanation? Why not just say there's this black box that makes distances shorter?"
Gray box.. "That would be kind of absurd, wouldn't it?"
"Not really." He shrugged, a quick spasm. "Like the way you handled time travel in Time and the ChinamanЧ"
"Time and/or the Chinaman."
"Whatever. You just presented it as an established fact. If they actually had this distance-shrinker, they wouldn't stand around talking about it. They'd just use it, wouldn't they?"