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

the'stenographer passed him his pad. "Somebody has told me that he discovered a certain relationship by
taking-" He read carefully, "-by taking the random paths of a neutron expressed in matrix mechanics by
Oppenheim, transforming his equations from the path-prediction domain to the cross-section domain and
integrating over the absorption areas."

In the silence of the room I could hear the faint buzz of the voice on the other end. And a great red blush
spread over the admiral's face from his brow to his neck. The faintly buzzing voice ceased and after a
long pause the admiral said slowly and softly: "No, it wasn't Fermi or Szilard. I'm not at liberty to tell you
who. Can you come right down to the Federal Building Security Office in New York? I-I need your
help. Crash priority." He hung up the phone wearily and muttered to himself: "Crash priority. Crash." And
wandered out of the office looking dazed.

His young men stared at one another in frank astonishment. "Five years," said one, "and-"

"Nix," said another, looking pointedly at me.

Gomez asked brightly: "What goes on anyhow? This is damn funny business, I think."

"Relax, kid," I told him. "Looks as if you'll make out all-"

"Nix," said the nixer again savagely, and I shut up and waited.

After a while somebody came in with coffee and sandwiches and we ate them. After another while the
admiral came in with Dr. Mines. Mines was a white-haired, wrinkled Connecticut Yankee. All I knew
about him was that he'd been in mild trouble with Congress



for stubbornly plugging world government and getting on some of the wrong letterheads. But I learned
right away that he was all scientist and didn't have a phony bone in his body.
"Mr. Gomez?" he asked cheerfully. "The admiral tells me that you are either a well-trained Russian spy
or a phenomenal self-taught nuclear physicist. He wants me to find out which."

"Russia?" yelled Gomez, outraged. "He crazy! I am American United States citizen!"

"That's as may be," said Dr. Mines. "Now, the admiral tells me you describe the u-v relationship as
'obvious.' I should call it a highly abstruse derivation in the theory of continued fractions and complex
multiplication."

Gomez strangled and gargled helplessly trying to talk, and finally asked, his eyes shining: "For favor,
could I have piece paper?"

They got him a stack of paper and the party was on.

For two unbroken hours Gomez and Dr. Mines chattered and scribbled. Mines gradually shed his
jacket, vest, and tie, completely oblivious to the rest of us. Gomez was even more abstracted. He didn't
shed his jacket, vest, and tie. He didn't seem to be aware of anything except the rapid-fire exchange of
ideas via scribbled formulae and the terse spoken jargon of mathematics. Dr. Mines shifted on his chair
and sometimes his voice rose with excitement. Gomez didn't shift or wriggle or cross his legs. He just sat
and scribbled and talked in a low, rapid monotone, looking straight at Dr. Mines with his eyes very wide