"Tom Maddox - Gravity's Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maddox Tom)

The whole group showed up that night. The living room of AllensonтАЩs house
was shabby and comfortable, with couches, chairs, and large pillows enough to hold
the sixteen of us: thirteen regulars and me, Carol, and Dickie Boy. Eight Caucasians
and five Orientals, three Chinese and two Japanese. Most were in their late thirties,
though a few were in their middle forties. No one under thirty, no one over fifty.
These were the theoretical heavyweights at the lab, men in their short-lived prime as it
exists in high-energy physics. A few were drinking coffee; most just sat waiting,
talking.

I gave her the simplest possible introduction. I said, тАЬThis is Carol Hen-drix,
who is here from Los Alamos, where she is Simulations Group Leader. She has
some very interesting simulations she would like to present to us.тАЭ

Carol Hendrix knew her audience. She had gone into sexless mode as much
as possible. Her face was pale and scrubbed, no makeup, and she wore baggy tan
trousers and a plaid wool shirtтАФin short, the closest approximation she could get to
what the men in front of her were wearing. From her first words, she spoke calmly
and authoritatively, for theyтАЩd listen to nothing else from her, and she allowed none
of the passion IтАЩd heard to animate her presentation.

She gave it all to them, dealt it out on a screen in the front of the room. The
slides came up showing pretty pictures from The Thing, equation sets from
QUARKER, annotations in her own hand: each idea led straightforwardly to the one
after, theory and practice brought together with casual elegance.

Leaving the last slideтАЩs тАЬEND SIMULATIONтАЭ on the screen, she
summa-rized: тАЬWe know little about the physical attributes of a singularity; in fact, its
essential nature is lawless.тАЭ She stopped, smiled. тАЬThough we would anticipate its
interactions with the nonsingular world of spacetime to be governed by the usual
conservation laws, this may not be the case. In short, the consequences of creating a
singularity are not well understood, and I would suggest that further analysis is
required before any experiments are undertaken that could bring such a peculiar
region of spacetime into close proximity with instruments so delicate as those in an
experimental area.тАЭ She paused and looked at all of them, said, тАЬI will be glad to hear
your questions and comments.тАЭ

This is where it would happen, I thought. Guests to Thursday Group often
got taken on the roughest intellectual ride of their lives, as this group of brilliant and
aggressive men probed everything they had said for truth, origi-nality, and
relevanceтАФor the converse. I went very tense, waiting for the onslaught to begin.

тАЬDickie Boy,тАЭ Bunford said. If this group had an alpha male, Bunford was it.
He was a big manтАФaround six three and more than two hundred poundsтАФwith a
strong jaw, a lined face, and sunburned skin. He had elaborated the so-called
тАЬStandard ModelтАЭ in new and interesting ways. The тАЬsemi-unbound quark stateтАЭ
was his particular interestтАФand the smart money had it that he and his group could
pick up a Nobel if the SSC found the interactions he was predicting. тАЬDid you
validate her simulations?тАЭ Bunford asked. Rather an oblique approach, I thought,
probably in prepara-tion for going for the throat, theoretically speaking. Carol
Hendrix turned to see how Dickie Boy would answer.