"Sean McMullen - Voice of Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

"No, it's a pair of rather old-fashioned radio transceivers. It's actually cheaper to use them than run cell
phone accounts. You know, belt tightening while we get the estate's finances back on an even keel."

"Well, that would explain a lot if it had been you who had heard the sword speak in 2004. The question
is who would be talking about supermarkets and the London Orbital six hundred years ago? In fact, how
could the sword speak at all тАж"

My voice trailed away as I recalled something from a yacht race, years earlier. I had been a member of
the university yacht club. The club owned no yacht, but members volunteered to crew the yachts of
people who could afford them, and the memory of one such vessel returned to me now. Through some
freakish accident in its manufacture, the metal mast acted like a crystal set and picked up one of the
coastal radio stations. Crystal sets work on the power of the radio signals themselves, they need no
batteries. If a mast could do it, why not a sword?

"You were saying?" he asked.

"There are documented cases of odd objects like false teeth and stoves picking up radio transmissions. I
once heard music coming from the mast of a yacht."

"So it could be possible with a sword?"

"Why not try testing it? Do you have one of those radio units handy?"

He fetched his transceiver. It was a large, solidly built, handheld unit from before the days of cell phones.

"Now that I think of it, Ellen did take the Don Alverin sword to London about a fortnight ago. It was
something to do with an insurance assessment."

"So it would have been in the car with her if she called you with her radio?"

"Well, yes. But she would have heard the sword picking up her words."

"Not if it was in the boot or on the back seat, buried under shopping. Take the sword into another room
and put it on a table. I'll try transmitting something to you."

Sir Steven left with the sword. I waited a minutes, then I turned on the radio unit and spoke my test
message. Presently I heard footsteps approaching.

"That was a naughty thing for Mary's father to do," he laughed.

"What? So the sword really did act as a sort of crystal set?"

"Not very loud, but it was quite clear. What a thought! This could be quite a good tourist attraction for
the estate."

"But we still have a problem. Radio transmitters are very sophisticated, and need a power source.
Nobody could have built one in the early fifteenth century."

"I suppose supermarkets were pretty thin on the ground too."