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

***

Very late at night, in his shop, with a half-consumed and long forgotten cup of coffee sitting within
reach, Dykstra was stymied. In two days, Moore's courier would contact him, and he'd be on his way to
the Moon. But he'd done no packing yet, hadn't even thought about it. The weapon consumed him.

It had yielded up its secrets with difficulty, and some still escaped him, but yielded up secrets it had. He
knew how the beam length was controlled now, knew how the energy of the X-ray photons arriving at
the terminating point was returned to the source. The application of Dykstra fields (he wondered what
the aliens called them) was ingenious and unique, but on Earth they were his baby after all. No matter
what new wrinkles the aliens may have thought up for them, he was sure he could smooth those wrinkles
into understanding.

The power sourceтАФthat was a tricky one. The weapon used mass conversion, turned matter directly into
energy, without any of the fuss and bother of fusion, or nucleus splitting, or combining particles and
antiparticles. Any kind of matter would do, but in an atmosphere the weapon just used air molecules.
How it converted the matter into energy his mind hadn't finished sorting out yet, but he had clues.

What stymied him now, what had gotten him out of bed after three desperate attempts to shut his brain
off and go to sleep, was Dykstra's complete inability to understand why the weapon didn't do something.

The X-ray laser beam had a diameter of 4.238 millimeters. Its projection length could be adjusted from
72.586 centimeters to infinity. The beam intensity could be adjusted from night light to fusion bomb.
"So why in the world didn't they make it so you could adjust the beam diameter and the collimation?"
Dykstra muttered for the hundredth time. "It would be trivial to add those characteristics. Why didn't
they? Didn't they think there would ever arise a time when a microfine beam might be desirable? Could
they never foresee a reason to make the beam disperse?

"Did they just plain miss it, or am I missing something?"

By his estimate, the alien technology was seventy-five to one hundred years ahead of human
achievement. Why not a thousand? He couldn't answer that question. But why didn't they add those
features?


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 - Chapter 1

The coffee remained, pointlessly, well within reach.

***

"Good morning, Professor Dykstra. I'm Lieutenant Robert Nachtegall."

"Yes. Major Moore's courier. I've been expecting you. And I prefer `Doctor.' " The young man stood
outside the front door. Dykstra had watched the lieutenant come down onto his mountain, watched the
sleek military courier vessel as it dropped below hypersonic speeds way out over the valley and then
gently floated down to the meadow that was Dykstra's yard. He had curly blond hair and clear blue eyes,
and looked like a nice enough sort. "I'm ready to go."