"Raymond Jones - The King of Eolim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Raymond)

"I'm Free," the boy announced suddenly. "I'm King of Eolim."
He spoke to the man who was setting his tractors. "You shouldn't
put that solar system there. It'll make everything come down."

The man turned, startled, and backed the tractors to a neutral
position. "Who areтАФ?" he began harshly. Then he stopped, his
gaze softening. He was an older man, but his face was youthful
and vigorous. "So you're Free. And King of Eolim. We're happy to
know you, Free. You say my positioning of the solar system was
off?"

Free nodded. "It should go a couple of degrees to the right of
where you were going to put it."

"How do you know?" the man asked kindly. "I checked it on
my computer, and that's what it tells me."

"I don't know," said Free. "I don't know how to use a
computer. It just looked wrong to me. Maybe you ought to check
it again."

"I'll do that." He sat down at the complex console of the
mini-computer and began feeding in the data of his proposed
addition once more. The data on all the rest of the elements of
the game were already in the computer. He pressed the button to
read out the answer od the screen. He frowned at the figures and
turned to Free. "You're right. I made a mistake. But I don't see
how in the world you knew that."

"It just seemed that way," said Free.

The man on the opposing team objected. "You can't make a
change after you're committed to placement. You forfeit the
game."

The first player smiled. "You surely wouldn't object if I took a
hunch from the King of Eolim, would you? That ought to make
for an unopposed position in any game."

"I guess you're right. He couldn't possibly have picked the
right coordinates except by sheer chance, could he?"

The player adjusted his tractors and picked up the solar
system once again. Carefully, he moved it to the coordinate
position Free had indicated, and which his own computer had
confirmed. He locked it in place with the magnetic field and
removed the tractors. The adjacent systems shuddered a trifle as
they adjusted to the new influence hi their fields, but there was
no catastrophic reaction.