"HalfWorldsMeet-HughRaymond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Raymond Hugh)

Randolph sat up and stared.
"My god !" he ejaculated, "And they say that yokels can't think ! Charley,
you've got an idea there. But--it's impossible! Nobody could ever get two
mirrors in exact alignment. If they did . . . but damn it, nobody can."
Small stared moodily into the gloom.

"Well," he said, licking his lips. "It was a good idea."
THEY PLAYED cards for awhile and then went into the laboratory where the two of
them worked over some machine's shaping odd lengths of metal and wood. Finally
Small went home.
In bed that night, the big man's idea haunted Randolph's dreams. He awoke at
last from a deep sleep, sweating. He'd been dreaming about mirrors. He'd been
caught between two of them in exact alignment and hurled, spinning, into
infinity.
"God!" he ejaculated and ran his fingers through his hair.
His wife stirred and woke up.
"What's the matter, dear ?" she asked, shifting around to face him.
He was still running his fingers through his hair.
"Martha," he said after a time, "It's coming again. An idea. Do you think we can
go on short rations for awhile?"
She smiled sleepily and kissed him, used to his sudden notions.
"Of course, darling. I didn't marry a plow horse. I married a man. Be one. Is it
more machines, this time?"
He nodded. "Yes," he said hoarsely.
She kissed him again.
He went down to his shack many evenings now and worked among the spinning
machines powered by the little dynamo that hummed endlessly away, driven by the
underground river his science had found. Charley Small helped him shape the box
he built and the queer mirrors he carefully polished and ground, and stood over
him with infinite patience holding the necessary tools like a nurse at an
operating table. Gradually the machine he was building took shape.
Martha came down one evening from the upstairs bedroom whence she had retired
after supper for a wink of sleep. It was a dark, warm night and both men were
working in their pants and undershirts. Their bare feet made pattering noises on
the pine floor as they moved and the room was lit up by the weird glow of a
small metal-cutting torch wielded by her husband.
As she entered the room, the Professor swung back the visor which protected his
eyes from the flame and stood up painfully. He arched his back. She came over
and rubbed it for awhile. Charley looked on, one hand on the controls of the
torch, the other tamping the ashes in his pipe. His huge eyes glittered with the
light of discovery.
"Anywhere near finished ?" she asked.
Randolph wiped his hands with some cotton waste and lit his pipe.
"We've got something, and I don't know what we've got. Remember that centrifuge
I built for the Polyclinic that made a dozen separate motions simultaneously ?
Well, this is a hundred times more complicated."
She straightened her gingham dress and tucked away a wisp of hair behind her
ear.
"What's that?" she asked, touching a smoothly rounded bump at one end of the
metal box lying on the floor. Looking over it she noticed another at the