"Laurence M. Janifer - Count Down" - читать интересную книгу автора (Janifer Laurence M)

the opinions of most people. In a matter like this, they have no competence at all. The decision has to be
left to technical menтАФto experts, if you like the word."
Freeman sighed again. "Would you want to tell that to 'most people'?" he asked.
"The public,"' Harcourt spat, "has no competence in the matter!"
"Very well," Freeman said, a little weariness showing through; he had been fighting a single battle, on
the same terms, for a week and a half, and was inclined to think boredom the chief terror of war.
"Explain it all to themтАФtell them they are not competent."
"They wouldn't agree! They wouldn't understandтАФ"
"Exactly," Freeman said, still in his softest tones. "And they wouldn't even agree to the parts they did
understand; they'd like none of it." Perhaps a small victory in the continuing war occurred; only
PraterтАФthinly eagerтАФand HarcourtтАФturning from red to purple-decisiveтАФshowed any interest at all.
Neutrality was an advantage to anyone who knew how to use it, as it nearly always was. "The only
difficulty," Freeman went quietly on, "is that, unless someone re-invents the ancient fuel and firing methods
in a great hurry, we will have to go on with our own techniques. Which involve a single, inalterable
exhaust speed, andтАФthereforeтАФa single, inalterable track for the Roubins to follow. The experts, Liam,
have been through all of this for us, in testimony and otherwise, and their figures are scarcely questionable
now. It's simple enough: exactly one point eight years, plus a few-odd days and hours, elapse between
one trip and the next. Given only one ship speed and only one Earth-Mars track, we can send one ship
everyтАФwell, call it every twenty-one months. If we pass this one, we wait for twenty-one months, and so
does Thoth. And Thoth isn't even that self-sustaining, not yet."
"We know all this," Harcourt said. "Why don't youтАФ"

But boredom was a weapon for both sides. "Liam," Freeman said, "after ten days of talk I have no
idea at all what anyone knows. I respond to what you say; but I've got to lay a ground of some sort
here."
"NowтАФ"
"Please," Freeman said, even more gently. "Thoth isn't self-sustaining. That's why the Roubins is
needed. Thoth won't wait twenty-one months; they'll start right back here long before then, probably via
the MoonтАФours, or one of theirs."
"Exactly," Harcourt said, as if he'd won something. A prize for bullheaded idiocy, perhaps,
Freeman thought. A steel carving of an animal head with an open cavity where the brain might
have been expected. Suitable for ashtray, paperweight, or missile. "Exactly. That's why we have to
ignore thisтАФsilly outcry. It will wear itself out, Dall; you'll see. As soon as the Roubins reaches Thoth
safely, it will die down completely."
"Eighty days from lift-off," Freeman said.
Sam Murin spoke up weightily, around his great black pipe. "It seems a long time."
"Seems, Sam? It is a long time," Freeman said. "As Minister for Information, you know the effect of
eighty days of uproar better than anyone else."
"Except the emperor," Sam put in.
Freeman shrugged. "If you like," he said. "At any rate, this is supposed to be a popular
governmentтАФan elective government. Responsive to the wishes of the people." He let the words hang in
the dead air for a second. "The government would fall."
Harcourt muttered something inaudible. He seemed to be practicing looking noble. "If it has to beтАФ"
he began.
Freeman caught the shadow of an immense distaste on Sam Murin's square face, and broke in. "Very
well. If we're to be sacrificial, let's consider the result. The government falls." He looked round at the
others: neutrality in most faces, stubbornness in Harcourt's, while Sam Murin went carefully blank and
Prater Shaw seemed to be trying for dutiful. "But what government succeeds us?" he went on. "A
government pledged to 'cut all this space-adventuring to the bone'тАФyou've heard the speeches.
Dismantle Thoth. Continue Moonbase by yearly shuttle and no more. Drop all probes, all attempts at