"Lee Killough - Deadly Silents" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killough Lee)

you?"

Ten shrugged. 'Well, the salary was more than I could
hope to earn in the Shawnee County P.D. and after a close

4 DEADLY S1LEHTS

call one watch, I decided that whatever the situation, it had
to be better than street war and finding excuses to give the
high holies for not attending church.**

He still felt that way, although Devane Brooks, the de-
partment director, had explained the seriousness of the
Egarad problem when he interviewed Ten. What irony,
that people faced with a situation nothing in their history
ever prepared them to expect or handle had to appeal for
help to the only other intelligent species they had met dur-
ing interstellar colonization, even though it was on the oth-
ers' worid where the problem began.

Ten knew that part already. He had learned in school
about the discovery of a Terran colony which led to the
Iregara locating Earth four hundred years ago and estab-
lishing cautious, then gradually more friendly communica-
tions between the races, ultimately resulting in the ex-
change of trade delegations. Each delegation was to live on
the other's planet and help carry on trade through fast,
unmanned tacbyon freighters. Unfortunately, although Ter-
rans knew about Egarad telepathy and Iregara were aware
that Terrans broadcast without generally being able to re-
ceive, neither side thought to correlate that with population
densities. So when the Egarad ramjets landed in Terran
cities after a near-centuiy-long trip, Iregara who had never
been in contact with more than five hundred other minds
at once suddenly found themselves surrounded by millions
of alien thoughts. Something burned out in them and
around Earth, eight thousand trade delegates became in-
stant telepathic deaf-mutes . . . Silents.

But not until Devane Brooks told him had Ten heard of
the equally tragic sequel. After development of the Equipo-
tential Transfer Portal, me shuttiebox, provided instant star
travel and made possible the repatriation of trade delegate
descendants who wanted to return home. Silence did not
end. It perpetuated. Without a prenatal telepathic link to
her fetus, a Silent woman, even on Egar, with telepathic
neighbors, could bear only Silent children.

Ten thought about that, looking out the skyrail window.
How had both races failed to consider what might happen