"H. Beam Piper - Graveyard of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

still classified secret. I have maps and plans of all the installations that were built on this planetтИТтИТliterally
thousands of them, many still undiscovered. Why, we haven't more than scratched the surface of what the
Federation left behind here. For instance, all the important installations exist in duplicate, some even in
triplicate, as a precaution against Alliance space attack."

"Space attack!" Colonel Zareff was indignant. "There never was a time when the Alliance could have taken
the offensive against Poictesme, even if an offensive outside our own spaceтИТarea had been part of our policy.
We just didn't have the ships. It took over a year to move a million and a half troops from Ashmodai to
Marduk, and the fleet that was based on Amaterasu was blasted out of existence in the spaceports and in orbit.
Hell, at the time of the surrender, we didn't haveтИТтИТ"

"They weren't taking chances on that, Colonel. But the point I want to make is that with everything I did find,
I never found, in any official record, a single word about the giant computer we call the Third FleetтИТArmy
Force Brain."

For a time, the only sound in the room was the tiny insectile humming of the electric clock on the wall. Then
Professor Kellton set his glass on the table, and it sounded like a hammerтИТblow.

"Nothing, Conn?" Kurt Fawzi was incredulous and, for the first time, frightened. The others were exchanging
uneasy glances. "But you must have! A thing like thatтИТтИТ"

"Of course it would be one of the closest secrets during the war," somebody else said. "But in forty years,
you'd expect something to leak out."

"Why, during the war, it was all through the Third Force. Even the Alliance knew about it; that's how Klem
heard of it."

"Well, Conn couldn't just walk into the secret files and read whatever he wanted to. Just because he couldn't
find anythingтИТтИТ"

"Don't tell me about security!" Klem Zareff snorted. "Certainly they still have it classified; staffтИТbrass'd rather
lose an eye than declassify anything. If you'd seen the lengths our staff went toтИТтИТhell, we lost battles because
the staff wouldn't release information the troops in the field needed. I remember onceтИТтИТ"

"But there was a Brain," Judge Ledue was saying, to reassure himself and draw agreement from the others. "It
was capable of combining data, and scanning and evaluating all its positronic memories, and forming
association patterns, and reasoning with absolute perfection. It was more than a positronic brainтИТтИТit was a
positronic superтИТmind."

"We'd have won the war, except for the Brain. We had ninety systems, a hundred and thirty inhabited planets,
a hundred billion peopleтИТтИТand we were on the defensive in our own spaceтИТarea! Every move we made was
known and anticipated by the Federation. How could they have done that without something like the Brain?"

"Conn, from what you learned of computers, how large a volume of space would you say the Brain would
have to occupy?" Professor Kellton asked.

Professor Kellton was the most unworldly of the lot, yet he was asking the most practical question.

"Well, the astrophysics computer I worked with at the University occupies a total of about one million cubic
feet," Conn began. This was his chance; they'd take anything he told them about computers as gospel. "It was