"H. Beam Piper - Naudsonce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

glad somebody else has the moral responsibility for this."

Lillian Ransby came out of the headquarters hut. "Ayesha's coming down this afternoon, with a lot of
equipment," she said. "We're not exactly going to count air molecules in the sound waves, but we'll do
everything short of that. We'll need more lab space, soundproofed."

"Tell Dave Questell what you want," Meillard said. "Do you really think you can get anything?"

She shrugged. "If there's anything there to get. How long it'll take is another question."
The two sixty-foot collapsium-armored turtles settled to the ground and went off contragravity. The ports
opened, and things began being floated off on lifter-skids: framework for the water tower, and curved
titanium sheets for the tank. Anna de Jong said something about hot showers, and not having to take any
more sponge-baths. Howell was watching the stuff come off the other landing craft. A dozen pairs of
four-foot wagon wheels, with axles. Hoes, in bundles. Scythe blades. A hand forge, with a crank-driven
fan blower, and a hundred and fifty pound anvil, and sledges and cutters and swages and tongs.

Everybody was busy, and Mom and Sonny were fidgeting, gesturing toward the work with their own
empty hands. Hey, boss; whatta we gonna do? He patted them on the shoulders.

"Take it easy." He hoped his tone would convey non-urgency. "We'll find something for you to do."

He wasn't particularly happy about most of what was coming off. Giving these Svants tools was fine, but
it was more important to give them technologies. The people on the ship hadn't thought of that. These
wheels, now; machined steel hubs, steel rims, tubular steel spokes, drop-forged and machined axles. The
Svants wouldn't be able to copy them in a thousand years. Well, in a hundred, if somebody showed them
where and how to mine iron and how to smelt and work it. And how to build a steam engine.

He went over and pulled a hoe out of one of the bundles. Blades stamped out with power press, welded
to tubular steel handles. Well, wood for hoe handles was hard to come by on a spaceship, even a battle
cruiser almost half a mile in diameter; he had to admit that. And they were about two thousand percent
more efficient than the bronze scrapers the Svants used. That wasn't the idea, though. Even supposing
that the first wave of colonists came out in a year and a half, it would be close to twenty years before
Terran-operated factories would be in mass production for the native trade. The idea was to teach these
people to make better things for themselves; give them a leg up, so that the next generation would be
ready for contragravity and nuclear and electric power.

Mom didn't know what to make of any of it. Sonny did, though; he was excited, grabbing Howell's arm,
pointing, saying, "Ghroogh! Ghroogh!" He pointed at the wheels, and made a stooping, lifting and
pushing gesture. Like wheelbarrow?

That's right." He nodded, wondering if Sonny recognized that as an affirmative sign. "Like big
wheelbarrow."

One thing puzzled Sonny, though. Wheelbarrow wheels were smallтАФhis hands indicated the sizeтАФand
single. These were big, and double. 'Let me show you this, Sonny."

He squatted, took a pad and pencil from his pocket, and drew two pairs of wheels, and then put a
wagon on them, and drew a quadruped hitched to it, and a Svant with a stick walking beside it. Sonny
looked at the pictureтАФ Svants seemed to have pictoral sense, for which make us thankful!тАФand then
caught his mother's sleeve and showed it to her. Mom didn't get it. Sonny took the pencil and drew