"Murray Leinster - From Beyond the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

either."
Professor Wardle moved, inside the laboratory.
"What's the startling fact you've discovered?" he asked.
"It's got a point source," Tommy Driscoll's father said, and Tommy could tell he was still grinning. "It
comes from one spot. There's a second-order effect in our atmosphere which has masked it up to now. I
can prove it."
Tommy chewed on a grass stem. As the son of a professor of physics, he was disillusioned about
scientists. They were not like the scientists of the comic books, who were mostly mad geniuses with plans
to make themselves Emperors of Earth and had to be foiled by Captain McGee or the Star Rover.
Tommy knew pessimistically that scientists just talk long words. Like his father, now. But Professor
Wardle seemed startled.
"A point source! But confound it, man! That would mean it's artificial! Not natural! That it was a
signal from beyond the stars! What else could it mean?"
"I'd like to know myself," said Tommy's father ruefully. "I've checked for interruptions like dots and
dashes, and for modulations, like our radio. I've made sure it isn't frequency modulated. The only thing
left is television."
"Therefore the television screen," said Professor Wardle. "I see. You're trying to analyze it with a
scanning system. Hm. Possible. But if it is a signal from another Solar SystemтАФ"
Tommy Driscoll sat up straight, his eyes wide and astonished. His mouth formed itself into a
particularly round O. This, of course, was the natural occurrence if Fate or Chance or Destiny was to use
him to make the comic books come true. He had been listening with only a fraction of his ears. To a
ten-year-old boy, adults do not often seem intelligent. Few of them have any interest in Space Captain
McGee or the Star Rover.
But Tommy's father was talking about interplanetary communication! Of signals from the planets of
another sun! From creatures who might be super-intelligent vegetables like the Wangos the Star Rover
had to fight, or immaterial entities like those misty things that almost defeated Captain McGee on the
Ghost Planet because when he swung his mighty fist there wasn't anything solid for him to hit. Tommy's
father was talking about things like that!
He got up and gazed in the open door of the small laboratory. He regarded the rather messy
assemblage of equipment on the workbench with bright-eyed, respectful awe. His father nodded.
"H'llo, Captain," he said to his son. "No hot wires around. Come in. What's on your mind?"
Tommy's eyes shone.
"UhтАФyou were talkin' about signals from another planet."
"I see," said his father. "Right up your alley, eh? I hadn't realized the popular appeal. But if you'd like
to listenтАФ"
Tommy fairly quivered with eagerness. His father threw a switch. There was a tiny hum from a
loud-speaker, then silence. Then, presently, there was a tiny hissing noise. Just a hissing sound. Nothing
else.
"That's it, Captain," his father told Tommy. "That's the noise the Jansky radiation makes. When we
turn this dial we tune it out this way"тАФhe demonstratedтАФ"and also when we turn the dial that way. Then
we tune it back in." He proved it. "Nobody has ever explained it, but it comes from outer space. I think it
comes from just one spot.

PROFESSOR WARDLE, smoking a pipe and sprawled in a chair, nodded amiably at Tommy.
"Yes, sir," Tommy said, thrilled.
His throat went dry from excitement. His father threw a second switch. A television-screen glowed
faintly.
"Now it's transferred to the screen," he told Tommy, "but it's still all scrambled. Nothing happens. It's
quite a job to unscramble a television signal even when you know all about the transmitter. If there's a
transmitter sending this, I don't know any of its constants." Over Tommy's head he said to Professor