"C M Kornbluth - Gomez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

submit it to your security censorship."

"It's a deal," said the admiral, sourly. He seemed to realize suddenly that the Sunday editor had been
figuring on such a deal all along.

On the plane for New York, the admiral filled me in. He was precise and unhappy, determined to make
the best of a bad job. "I was awakened at three this morning by a phone call from the chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission. He had been awakened by a call from Dr. Monroe of the Scientific
Advisory Committee. Dr. Monroe had been up late working and sent out for the Sunday Tribune to read
before going to sleep. He saw the Gomez letter and went off like a sixteen-inch rifle. The neutron
cross-section absorption relationship expressed in it happens to be, Mr. Vilchek, his own work. It also
happens to be one of the nation's most closely guarded-er-atomic secrets. Presumably this Gomez
stumbled on it somehow, as a janitor or something of the sort, and is feeding his ego by pretending to be
an atomic scientist."

I scratched my unshaved jaw. "Admiral," I said, "you wouldn't kid me? How can three equations be a
top atomic secret?"

The admiral hesitated. "All I can tell you," he said slowly, "is that breeder reactors are involved."



"But the letter said that. You mean this Gomez not only swiped the equations but knew what they were
about?"

The admiral said grimly: "Somebody has been incredibly lax. It would be worth many divisions to the
Soviet for their man Kapitza to see those equations-and realize that they are valid."

He left me to chew that one over for a while as the plane droned over New Jersey. Finally the pilot
called back: "E.T.A. five minutes, sir. We have landing priority at Newark."

"Good," said the admiral. "Signal for a civilian-type car to pick us up without loss of time."

"Civilian," I said.

"Of course civilian!" he snapped. "That's the hell of it. Above all we must not arouse suspicion that there
is anything special or unusual about this Gomez or his letter. Copies of the Tribune are on their way to the
Soviet now as a matter of routine-they take all American papers and magazines they can get. If we tried
to stop shipment of Tribunes that would be an immediate giveaway that there was something of
importance going on."

We landed and the five of us got into a late-model car, neither drab nor flashy. One of the admiral's
young men relieved the driver, a corporal with Signal Corps insignia. There wasn't much talk during the
drive from Newark to Spanish Harlem, New York. Just once the admiral lit a cigarette, but he flicked it
through the window after a couple of nervous puffs.

The Porto Bello Lunchroom was a store-front restaurant in the middle of a shabby tenement block.
Wide-eyed, graceful, skinny little kids stared as our car parked in front of it and then converged on us
purposefully. "Watch your car, mister?" they begged. The admiral surprised them-and me-with a flood of
Spanish that sent the little extortionists scattering back to their stickball game in the street and their potsy