"Murray Leinster - The Boomerang Circuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The Boomerang Circuit
By MURRAY LEINSTER

A COMPLETE KIM RENDELL NOVEL

When the prison world of Ades, outpost of freedom, vanishes into nothingness,
Kim Rendell sets forth in the "Starshine" to find out whyтАФand his discoveries
make tyrants tremble!

CHAPTER I
Damaged Transmitter

KIM RENDELL had almost forgotten that he was ever a matter-transmitter technician. But then the
matter-transmitter on Terranova ceased to operate and they called on him.
It happened just like that. One instant the wavering, silvery film seemed to stretch across the arch in
the public square of the principal but still small settlement on the first planet to be colonized in the Second
Galaxy. The film bulged, and momentarily seemed to form the outline of a human figure as a
totally-reflecting, pulsating cocoon about a moving object. Then it broke like a bubble-film and a walking
figure stepped unconcernedly out. Instantly the silvery film was formed again behind it and another shape
developed on the film's surface.
Only seconds before, these people and these objects had been on another planet in another island
universe, across unthinkable parsecs of space. Now they were here. Bales and bundles and parcels of
merchandise. Huge containers of foodstuffsтАФthe colony on Terranova was still not completely
self-sustainingтАФand drums of fuel for the space-ships busy mapping the new galaxy for the use of men,
and more people, and a huge tank of viscous, opalescent plastic.
Then came a pretty girl, smiling brightly on her first appearance on a new planet in a new universe,
and crates of castings for more spaceships, and a family group with a pet zorag on a leash behind them,
and a batch of cryptic pieces of machinery, and a man.
Then nothing. Without fuss, the silvery film ceased to be. One could look completely through the
archway which was the matter- transmitter. One could see what was on the other side instead of a
wavering, pulsating reflection of objects nearby. The last man to come through spoke unconcernedly over
his shoulder, to someone he evidently believed just behind, but who was actually now separated from him
by the abyss between island universes and some thousands of parsecs beyond.
Nobody paid any attention to matter-transmitters ordinarily. They had been in use for ten thousand
years. All the commerce of the First Galaxy now moved through them. Spaceships had become obsolete,
and the little StarshineтАФwhich was the first handiwork of man to cross the gulf to the Second
GalaxyтАФhad been a museum exhibit for nearly two hundred years before Kim Rendell smashed out of
the museum in it, with Dona, and the two of them went roaming hopelessly among the ancient, decaying
civilizations of man's first home in quest of a world in which they could live in freedom.

IT SEEMED a hopeless quest, at first. Every government was absolute, and hence every ruler had
become tyrannical. And the very limitations of spaceships, which had caused their supplantation by
matter-transmitters, had seemed to doom their quest to futility.
But Kim had adapted the principle of the transmitter to the drive of his ship, and with the increased
speed and range they'd found freedom on the prison world of Ades, where alone there was no tyranny.
And later Kim had crossed to this new galaxy, and set up a transmitter hereтАФthe one which had just
failedтАФand the exiled rebels and recalcitrants of Ades had begun to move through to a new universe
where, they swore, men should be forever free.* (See "THE DISCIPLINARY CIRCUIT." Thrilling
Wonder Stories, Winter Issue, 1946.)
They planned to have Ades remain a receiving-depot for more criminals and rebels who would