"Tom Purdom-Moonchild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

Ted was lounging against a jumble of rocks beside the main fountain. He was talking to a freckle-faced
girl in a long black and yellow robe. Another girl was sitting on top of the rocks with her arms around her
knees.
The spray from the fountain touched Harvey's face. He raised his hand in greeting and Ted grinned and
waved back.
"It's about time you bolts got here," Ted said. "I knew you'd get here just when I found some decent
company."
Dr. Oliver's face darkened for a moment. He smiled at the girls and the freckle-faced girl smiled back.
The other girl nodded her head and turned back to her contemplation of the fountain.
"We've got a little family business we have to talk about," Ted said. "I'll probably be back in about
twenty minutes."
"I'll still be here," the freckle-faced girl said.
"I hope so."
Ted pushed himself away from the rocks and fell in beside his father. The three of them turned a
corner and moved down a narrow, winding walk.
A yellow bug landed on Harvey's arm and he pushed it off without hurting it. The soft, low sound of a
pair of recorders reached him from somewhere in the shrubbery. Two girls in their early twenties were
strolling about ten meters ahead of them.
Dr. Oliver's face looked tense and sober. He was holding his long, thin arms close to his sides and
walking as if his joints were surrounded by a rigid, invisible space suit.
"That girl Natasha really lights me up," Ted said.
Dr. Oliver swallowed. "The girl in the black and yellow robe?"
"Right."
"Have you known her very long?"
"I just met her last week. Her father owns a farm in a little dome about twenty kilometers out. She only
gets into town when she can hitch a ride with somebody."
They turned a corner and entered a little clearing in which a small fountain was dancing between two
stone benches. The two girls had disappeared around a bend twenty meters ahead.
Dr. Oliver stopped at the edge of the clearing. He touched his chin with his hand, and Ted and Harvey
glanced at each other.
Dr. Oliver stepped into the center of the clearing. He looked up and down the path and studied the
bushes on both sides.
"All right, Harvey."
Harvey stepped down the walk and looked around. He pulled a container out of his robe and his
father grabbed it and held it against his side with his hand covering most of it.
"Watch the other end of the walk," Dr. Oliver said. "Stay there, Ted."
Harvey stepped across the clearing and positioned himself beside a bush. He glanced over his
shoulder and saw his father dropping to his hands and knees and crawling into the bushes.
The container is his father's hand had a small black tab on one side. When Dr. Oliver pulled on the
tab, a powder and a liquid would combine inside the container and an odor would spread through the
surrounding area as the compound evaporated. No human nose could detect the odor, but it would have
a serious effect on a small black and red beetle. Like most insects, the beetles located their mates with
their sense of smell; their chemical senses could detect the correct odor if only a few molecules were
present in every cubic foot of air-- and the chemical in the containers would increase the number of
molecules per cubic foot by nearly six hundred percent. The beetles would become confused and their
birth rate would be significantly affected.
The beetles were the specific control for a bug that ate the roots of certain plants and kept their
population under control. The bugs would begin to increase and there would be a gradual decrease in the
number of plants in three different species. Within six Earth months, if Dr. Oliver's calculations were
correct, the plant population in the artificial eco-system would be much less varied than it had been.