"Charles L. Harness-Stalemate in Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

He turned back to the ceiling. "Gorph says someone prepared a priority dispatch with my signature,
and he sent it out. I don't suppose you have any idea who did it?"
Time! Time!
"When I was Gorph's assistant, there was a young officer-- I can't remember his name-- who
sometimes forged your signature to urgent actions when Gorph was out. This is true, Perat. My mind is
open to you."
He fastened his luminous gray eyes on her. "I presume you're lying, but..." His mental probe skimmed
rapidly over her cortical association centers. Her skill was strained to the utmost, setting up false
memories of each of thousands of synaptic groups just ahead of Perat's probe. On some of the groups
she knew she had made blunders, but apparently she preserved the general impression by strengthened
verification in subsequent nets. She wove a brief tale of a young officer in charge of metals salvage who
had sent an order to a field group to recover some sort of metal, and since Gorph had been out, and
H.Q. needed the metal urgently, the officer did not wait for official authorization. His probe then searched
her visual lobe thoroughly, but with growing skepticism. She offered him only indistinct memories of the
dead officer's identity.
"Who was the man?" asked Perat as a matter of form, sipping his terif absently.
"Sub-leader Galen, I think." That would give him pause. He knew she had offered no visual memory of
Galen. He would wonder why she was lying.
"Are you sure?"
She wanted to look at the time-dial on the wall, but dared not. From the corner of her eye she saw
Perat's left arm tense, then relax warily. His mental probe had fastened grimly to her mind again, though
he must know it would be effort wasted. She conjured up an image of Sub-leader Galen in the act of
telling her he was handling a very urgent matter and that he'd tell the Viscount later what he'd done. Then
the face of the young officer changed to another of the staff, then another, then still another. Then back to
Galen.
"No, I'm not sure."
Perat smiled thinly. "You wished to gain time, and I wished to idle it away. I suppose we have both
been fairly successful."
The communication box beside the bed jangled.
"Yes?" cried Perat, all alert.
As his mouth was forming the word, his probe was collapsing within her mind, and her own flashed
briefly into his mind. The hand under the pillow held a Faeg, aimed at her chest. But the safety catch was
still on.
"Excellency?" came Gorph's tinny voice.
"Yes, Gorph? Have you replaced the columns?"
"Replaced"...? That seemed to indicate that the field crew had followed her forged order, then
returned the columns by Perat's countercommand, relayed telepathically through Gorph. But once all the
great rods were drawn, replacing them did not halt the strain pile. The negative potential would keep on
increasing geometrically with time, as planned, to the final goal of joint catastrophe and stalemate.
Some sort of knowledge was drumming silently at her threshold of consciousness. Something she
couldn't quite grasp. About the woman in the stereop? Possibly. It would come to her soon.
Ignoring Perat's gloating smile, she looked casually at the metron dial, and her heart leaped with
elation, for the dial had ceased revolving. Electrons must be flowing from the center of the ship through
the walls, outward toward the surface two thousand miles away, and the massive currents were probably
jamming all the wall circuits.
Within minutes, finis.
Could she really rest, now? She was beginning to feel very tired, almost sleepy. Her duty had been
done, and nothing could ever be important again.
Gorph was answering his master over the speaker: "Yes, Your Excellency, we got them back, that is
to say, excepting that one of the five is only half-way out of its cradle"