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

open and lit up like searchlights.

The rest of us just watched and wondered.

Dr. Mines broke at last. He stood up and said: "I can't take any more, Gomez. I've got to think it over-"
He began to leave the room, mechanically scooping up his clothes, and then realized that we were still
there.

"Well?" asked the admiral grimly.

Dr. Mines smiled apologetically. "He's a physicist, all right," he said. Gomez sat up abruptly and looked
astonished.

"Take him into the next office, Higgins," said the admiral. Gomez let himself be led away, like a
sleepwalker.

Dr. Mines began to chuckle. "Security!" he said. "Security!"

The admiral rasped: "Don't trouble yourself over my decisions, if you please, Dr. Mines. My job is
keeping the Soviets from pirating American science and I'm doing it to the best of my ability. What I



want from you is your opinion on the possibility of that young man having worked out the equations as
he claimed."

Dr. Mines was abruptly sobered. "Yes," he said. "Unquestionably he did. And will you excuse my
remark? I was under some strain in trying to keep up with Gomez."

"Certainly," said the admiral, and managed a frosty smile. "Now if you'll be so good as to tell me how
this completely impossible thing can have happened-?"

"It's happened before, admiral," said Dr. Mines. "I don't suppose you ever heard of Ramanujan?"

"No."

"Srinivasa Ramanujan?"

"No!"

"Oh. -Well, Ramanujan was born in 1887 and died in 1920. He was a poor Hindu who failed twice in
college and then settled down as a government clerk. With only a single obsolete textbook to go on he
made himself a very great mathematician. In 1913 he sent some of his original work to a Cambridge,
professor. He was immediately recognized and called to England, where he was accepted as a first-rank
man, became a member of the Royal Society, a Fellow of Trinity, and so forth."

The admiral shook his head dazedly.

"It happens," Dr. Mines said. "Oh yes, it happens. Ramanujan had only one out-of-date book. But this is
New York. Gomez has access to all the mathematics he could hope for and a great mass of unclassified