"Pohl, Frederik - Father Of The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

He waited for a laugh, hopelessly. Then he said, УAlthough I must say he appears to have something, since the testsЧФ
Marchand said gently and with enormous restraint: УDan, will you please spit it out? LetТs see what you said so far. ThereТs this fellow named Eisele, and he has something, and itТs crazy, but it works.Ф
УWellЧyes.Ф
Marchand slowly leaned back and closed his eyes. УSo that means that we were all wrong. Especially me. And all our workЧФ
УLook, Norman! DonТt ever think like that. Your work has made all the difference. If it werenТt for you, people like Eisele never would have had the chance. DonТt you know he was working under one of our grants?Ф
УNo. I didnТt know that.Ф MarchandТs eyes went out to the Tycho
Brahe for a moment. УBut it doesnТt help much. I wonder if fifty-odd thousand men and women who have given most of their lives to the deep freeze because ofЧmy workЧwill feel the way you do. But thanks. YouТve told me what I want to know.Ф

When Czerny entered the chart room an hour later, Marchand said at once, УAm i in good enough shape to stand a smith?Ф
The doctor put down his bag and took a chair before he answered. УWe donТt have anyone available, Norman. There hasnТt been a volunteer for years.Ф
УNo. I donТt mean smithed into a human body. I donТt want any would-be suicide volunteer donorsЧyou said yourself the smithed bodies sometimes suicided, anyway. IТll settle for a chimp. Why should I be any better than that young fellowЧwhatТs his name?Ф
УYou mean Duane Ferguson.Ф
УSure. Why should I be any better than he is?Ф
УOh, cut it out, Norman. YouТre too old. Your phospholipidsЧФ
УIТm not too old to die, am I? And thatТs the worst that could happen.Ф
УIt wouldnТt be stable! Not at your age; you just donТt understand the chemistry. I couldnТt promise you more than a few weeks.Ф
Marchand said joyously, УReally! I didnТt expect that much. ThatТs more than you can promise me now.Ф
The doctor argued, but Marchand had held up his end of many a hard-fought battle in ninety-six years, and besides, he had an advantage over Czerny. The doctor knew even better than Marchand himself that getting into a passion would kill him. At the moment when Czerny gauged the risk of a smith translation less than the risk of going on arguing about it, he frowned, shook his head grudgingly, and left.
Slowly Marchand wheeled after him.
He did not have to hurry to what might be the last act of his life. There was plenty of time. In the Institute they kept a supply of breeding chimpanzees, but it would take several hours to prepare one.
One mind had to be sacrificed in the smith imposition. The man would ultimately be able to return to his own body, his risk less than one chance in 50 of failure. But the chimp would never be the same. Marchand submitted to the beginnings of the irradiation, the delicate titration of his body fluids, the endless strapping and patching and clamping. He had seen it done, and there were no surprises in the procedure. . . . He had not known, however, that it would hurt so much.
III

Trying not to walk on his knuckles (but it was~ hard; the ape body was meant to crouch, the arms were too long to hang comfortably along his sides), Marchand waddled out into the pad area and bent his rigid chimpТs spine back in order to look up at the hated thing. Dan Fleury came toward him. УNorm?Ф he asked tentatively. Marchand attempted to nod; it was not a success, but Fleury understood. УNorman,Ф he said, Уthis is Sigmund Eisele. He invented the FTL drive.Ф
Marchand raised one long arm and extended a hand that resisted being opened: it was used to being clawed into a fist. УCongradulazhuns,Ф he said, as clearly as he could. Virtuously he did not squeeze the hand of the young dark-eyed man who was being introduced to him. He had been warned that chimpanzee strength maimed human beings. He was not likely to forget, but it was tempting to allow himself to consider it for a moment.
He dropped the hand and winced as pain flooded through him.
Czerny had warned him to expect it. УUnstable, dangerous, wonТt last,Ф had rumbled through his conversation, Уand donТt forget, Norman, the sensory equipment is set high for you; youТre not used to so much input: it will hurt.Ф
But Marchand had assured the doctor he would not mind that, and indeed he didnТt. He looked at the ship again. УZo thads id,Ф he grumbled, and again bent the backbone, the whole barrel chest of the brute he occupied, to stare at the ship on the pad. It was perhaps a hundred feet tall. УNod mudge,Ф he said scornfully. УDe Zirian, dad was our firzd, zdood nine hoonderd feed dali and garried a dousand beople to Alpha Zendauri.Ф
УAnd it brought a hundred and fifty back alive,Ф said Eisele. He didnТt emphasize the words in any way, but he said it quite clearly. УI want to tell you IТve always admired you, Dr. Marchand. I hope you wonТt mind my company. I understand you want to go along with me out to the Tycho Brahe.Ф
УWhy zhould I mind?Ф He did, of course. With the best will in the world, this young fellow had thrown seventy years of dedication, plus a handsome fortuneЧeight million dollars of his own, countless hundreds of millions that Marchand had begged from millionaires, from government handouts, from the pennies of schoolchildrenЧtossed them all into the chamber pot and flushed them into history. They would say: УA nonce figure of the early twenty-first century, Norman
Marchand, or Marquand, attempted stellar colonization with primitive rocket-propelled craft. He was, of course, unsuccessful, and the toll of life and wealth in his ill-conceived venture enormous. However, after EiseleТs faster-than-light became practicable . . .У They would say that he was a failure. And he was.

When Tycho Brahe blasted off to the stars, massed bands of five hundred pieces played it to its countdown, and television audiences all over the world watched it through their orbiting satellites. A President, a Governor, and half the Senate were on hand.
When EiseleТs little ship took off to catch it and tell its people their efforts had been all in vain, it was like the departure of the 7:17 ferry for Jersey City. To that extent, thought Marchand, had Eisele degraded the majesty of starifight. Yet he would not have missed it for anything. Not though it meant forcing himself as super-cargo on Eisele, who had destroyed his life, and on the other smithed chimpanzee, Duane Ferguson, who was for some reason deemed to have special privileges in regard to the Brahe.
They shipped an extra FTL unitЧMarchand heard one of the men call it a polyflecter, but he would not do it the honor of asking anyone what that meantЧfor some reason. Because it was likely to break down, so spares were needed? Marchand dismissed the question, realizing that it had not been a fear but a hope. Whatever the reason, he didnТt care; he didnТt want even to be here; he only regarded it as his inescapable duty.
And he entered EiseleТs ship.
The interior of EiseleТs damned ship was built to human scale, nine-foot ceilings and broad acceleration couches, but they had brought hammocks scaled to a chimpanzee torso for himself and Duane Ferguson. Doubtless they had looted the hammocks from the new ship. The one that would never flyЧor at least not on streams of ionized gas. And doubtless this was almost the last time that a manТs mind would have to leave Earth in an apeТs body.
What EiseleТs damned ship rode to the stars on in place of ionized gas Marchand did not understand. The whatcha-flecter, whatever the damned thing was named, was so tiny. The whole ship was a pigmy.
There was no room for reaction mass, or at least only for enough to get it off-Earth. Then the little black boxЧit was not really little, since it was the size of a grand piano, and it was not black, but gray, but it was a box, all rightЧwould work its magic. They called that magic Уpolynomiation.Ф What polynomiation was Marchand did not try to understand, beyond listening, or seeming to listen, to EiseleТs
brief, crude attempt to translate mathematics into English. He heard just enough to recognize a few words. Space was N-dimensional. All right, that answered the whole question, as far as he was concerned, and he did not hear EiseleТs tortuous effofts to explain how one jacked oneself up, so to speak, into a polynomial dimensionЧor no, not that, but translated the existing polynomial extensions of a standard four-space mass into higher ordersЧhe didnТt hear. He didnТt hear any of it. What he was listening to was the deep liquid thump of the great apeТs heart that now was sustaining his brain.
Duane Ferguson appeared, in the apeТs body that he would never leave now. That was one more count of MarchandТs self-indictment; he had heard them say that the odds had worked against Ferguson, and his body had died in the imposition.
As soon as he had heard what Eisele was up to, Marchand had seized on it as a chance for expiation. The project was very simple. A good test for EiseleТs drive, and a mission of mercy, too. They intended to fleet after the plodding, long-gone Tycho Brahe and catch it in mid-space . . . for even now, thirty years after it had left Port Kennedy, it was still decelerating to begin its search orbit around Groombridge 1618. As Marchand strapped himself in, Eisele was explaining it all over again. He was making tests on his black box and talking at the same time. УYou see, sir, weТll try to match course and velocity, but, frankly, thatТs the hard part. Catching themТs nothing: weТve got the speed. Then weТll transfer the extra polyflecter to the Tycho BraheЧФ
УYez, thanggs,Ф said Marchand politely, but he still did not listen to the talk about the machine. As long as it existed, he would use it
Чhis conscience would not let him off thatЧbut he didnТt want details.
Because the thing was, there were all those wasted lives.
Every year in the Tycho BraheТs deep freeze means a month off the life of the body that lay there. Respiration was slowed, but it was not stopped. The heart did not beat, but blood was perfused through a pump; tubes dripped sugar and minerals into the torpid blood; catheters carried wastes away. And Groombridge 1618 was a flight of ninety years.
The best a forty-year-old man could hope for on arriving was to be restored into a body whose biological age was nearly fiftyЧwhile behind him on the Earth was nothing but a family long dead, friends turned into dust.
It had been worth it. Or so the colonists had thought. Driven by the worm that wriggled in the spine of the explorer, the itch that drove
him on; because of the wealth and the power and the freedom that a new world could give them, and because of the place they would have in the history booksЧnot WashingtonТs place, or even ChristТs. They would have the place of an Adam and an Eve.
It had been worth it, all those thousands had thought when they volunteered and set out. But what would they think when they landed!