"H. Beam Piper - Day of the Moron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"Look, Sid," Melroy said. "We've been all over that. Once we start work on the reactors, you and Ned
Puryear and Joe Ricci and Steve Chalmers can't be everywhere at once. A cybernetic system will only
do what it's been assembled to do, and if some quarter-wit assembles one of these things wrongтАФ" He
left the sentence dangling; both men knew what he meant.

Keating shook his head. "This union's going to bawl like a branded calf about it," he predicted. "And if
any of the dear sirs and brothers get washed outтАФ" That sentence didn't need to be completed, either.

"We have a right," Melroy said, "to discharge any worker who is, quote, of unsound mind, deficient
mentality or emotional instability, unquote. It says so right in our union contract, in nice big print."
"Then they'll claim the tests are wrong."

"I can't see how they can do that," Doris Rives put in, faintly scandalized.

"Neither can I, and they probably won't either," Keating told her. "But they'll go ahead and do it. Why,
Scott, they're pulling the Number One Doernberg-Giardano, tonight. By oh-eight-hundred, it ought to be
cool enough to work on. Where will we hold the tests? Here?"

"We'll have to, unless we can get Dr. Rives security-cleared." Melroy turned to her. "Were you ever
security-cleared by any Government agency?"

"Oh, yes. I was with Armed Forces Medical, Psychiatric Division, in Indonesia in '62 and '63, and I did
some work with mental fatigue cases at Tonto Basin Research Establishment in '64."

Melroy looked at her sharply. Keating whistled.

"If she could get into Tonto Basin, she can get in here," he declared.

"I should think so. I'll call Colonel Bradshaw, the security officer."

"That way, we can test them right on the job," Keating was saying. "Take them in relays. I'll talk to Ben
about it, and we'll work up some kind of a schedule." He turned to Doris Rives. "You'll need a
wrist-Geiger, and a dosimeter. We'll furnish them," he told her. "I hope they don't try to make you carry a
pistol, too."

"A pistol?" For a moment, she must have thought he was using some technical-jargon term, and then it
dawned on her that he wasn't. "You meanтАФ?" She cocked her thumb and crooked her index finger.

"Yeah. A rod. Roscoe. The Equalizer. We all have to." He half-lifted one out of his side pocket. "We're
all United States deputy marshals. They don't bother much with counterespionage, here, but they don't
fool when it comes to countersabotage. Well, I'll get an order cut and posted. Be seeing you, doctor."




"You think the union will make trouble about these tests?" she asked, after the general foreman had gone
out.

"They're sure to," Melroy replied. "Here's the situation. I have about fifty of my own men, from