"Johnson, Annabel And Edgar - The Danger Quotient - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnson Annabel And Edgar)

coat. I took it out and laid it on his desk. "Three left a
message in Pinocchio's banks for me to find. She seemed
to think it was top priority."

But Eddinger kept right on fizzing with fine carbonated
rage. "I'll tell you what's top priority: our food supply.
We've got fungus in the hydroponic tomatoes, a twenty-
five percent drop-off in corn production, two strains of
peanuts petering out. Unless we can get up onto the surface
and start growing crops normally again, we are all dead-
But you don't see the urgency of thatЧ"

I said, "If you'd just listen to the tape . . . Three dis-
covered something that made her put full effort into the
refractor. In fact she was dictating this report when she had
her last heart attack."

Eddinger glared at me silently, but he was too good a
scientist not to be curious. Finally, with a shrug, he slid
the cassette into the slot on his word processor and punched
the playback button. We both winced at the sudden sound
of Three's familiar tonesЧshe'd had a deep, distinctive
voice, pitched now with excitement.

"Four-bits!" (An odd nickname she'd given me, some-
thing to do with a coin called a fifty-cent piece in the old
days.) "Four-bits, I'm onto something so fantasticЧ"There
she gets a hard fit of coughing, and when she comes back
she sounds as if she's struggling to keep calm. "There isn't
time to explain the project I've been working onЧit's a
time refractor, full details in Pokey's memory banks. No-
body but you has access, Eddinger wouldn't go for it. 1
wasn't sure myself, but I had this hunch, I believedЧ Well,
that's beside the point. No, it isn't. I thought if I could go
back for a while to the old days and make comparisons, I

12

could figure out why this underground existence is killing
us. Maybe buy some timeЧfor me and you. Everybody.
But I never dreamed anything like this. You can't imagine
what I just discoveredЧ"

She starts choking again, it's thirty or forty seconds before
she can go on. "I can proveЧnot exactly prove, but I'm
sureЧit's obvious that youЧ" Another gasp and then her
voice sounds shaky and distracted. "Incredible. Little brother,
it's up to you . - - such a job . . . you must finish the ma-
chine fuli speed, because you've got to go back! Life of
this complex and everyone in it depends ... de-