"Jeffrey D. Kooistra - Dykstra's War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kooistra Jeffrey D)

"Ah, very interesting." Dykstra was watching visual scenes of the weapon being tested. There were its
parts, disassembledтАФit looked remarkably simple. There were three men out in a field, test-firing,
manipulating the settings to make the beam change length from less than a meter to unlimited. There
were scenes of the weapon being fired at targetsтАФa fifteen-centimeter-thick steel beam, sliced in two
effortlessly; a three-meter-wide crater blasted into a granite mountainside; a one-hundred-thousand-liter
tank of water brought to the boiling point, and entirely evaporated, and the gun still not short of energy.

He looked away from the screen to his table. He picked up the weapon. "You will not defeat me," he
said, but he smiled at it with admiration.

He caught a glint of light out of the corner of his eye. It was the shiny titanium walking stick, leaning
securely in the corner by the door. Characterless.

With a twinkle in his sharp eyes, Dykstra carried the gun with him, took the cane in his right hand, and
went outside. "Now is as good a time as any to start my tests," he said to the squirrels playing tag around
the trunk of an ancient oak.

The cane was a help, he had to admit, walking out here in a full g field. Crossing his yard he approached
the edge of the woods. He had a particular branch on a particular young oak in mind. AhтАФthere it was.

He leaned his cane against a neighboring tree and examined the weapon. If the instructions were correct,
then moving this lever to here, and touching this stud just . . . so . . . Fisssss! Out came the beam,
glowing brightly, too bright to look at for more than an instant. Dykstra's careful eye estimated the
length at eighty-five centimeters.

Somewhere behind his eyes, though almost visible to him, his mind started the process of figuring out
how the weapon controlled the length of the beam. He couldn't help itтАФhis mind had always worked
that way.

He brought the beam against the base of the limb, quickly, and with a brief burst of flame and a blast of
superheated smoke, the branch fell to the ground.

"Marvelous!"

Dykstra took his walking stick from the tree and laid it down alongside the branch, measuring. With
another flick of the beam he cut the branch to the desired length. As if born to it, Dykstra played the
beam against the branch, severing the remaining branchlets, baking off the bark, delicately charring the
surface.

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 - Chapter 1



The twinkle still in his eyes, he turned off the beam, then reached down for his creation. It was warm to
the touch, but not too hot to hold. It left black marks on his palms, but he didn't care. "I'll have to clean
you off, and sand you a bit, and give you a coat of wax," he said to the stick.

But carved from a living oak with an alien weaponтАФthe world's first alien weaponтАФand shaped by his
own hands. . . . Now there was a walking stick with character.