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

opposite end.
Her husband grunted.
"That's the nub of the whole thing. It equalizes about a million different
factors all at the same time: plane distortion, temperature warp, atmospheric
density inside the box, impact of cosmic rays, vibrations from one end of the
spectrum to the other and ordinary earth movements. In some ways, though, it
isn't as important as this prism." He paused and touched an arrangement of
polished glass directly in the center of the top of the steel box. "This
reflects light down into the box to another prism which directs the beam toward
one of the mirrors mounted on the inside of those bulges."
She considered this for awhile.
"Didn't you tell me that the interior prism was the last stumbling block? You
had to get it out of the way without destroying the reflection."
He puffed on his pipe. His eyes lit up with deep satisfaction.
"That's easy--now." He walked to a cabinet and brought out a violin.
Caressingly, he ran his fingers down the polished surface.
"At the precise instant when the beam flashes down through the prisms and into
the mirrors, I play a certain note on this violin and the interior prism
shatters. The note is attuned to its structure and to none other. A neat bit of
reasoning. I wonder if it will work."
She smiled, patted him on his shoulder and left.
FOR A WHILE he stood silent, then lifted the instrument, placed its chin-rest
against his throat and played. Charley remained motionless, squatting near the
floor, bathed, like a devil out of hell, in the glow of the torch still spitting
noisily on a metal grid.
Randolph put down the violin abruptly.
"Let's see if it works," he said softly.

They played with it for a while until their supply of prisms ran out and then
opened the box. On the dark metal floor, between the poised mirrors, lay several
microscopic lumps of matter that had not been there when they locked the top
earlier in the evening.
Randolph shut off the flashlight that had been shining into the primary prism
and rolled it into a tool box. He moved to a wooden bench and sat down.
Nervously he relit his pipe which had gone out and set his face firmly between
his hands, elbows planted on the top of the table before him.
"Charley," he called softly, inclining his head.
The big man shuffled over and leaned heavily on the table, the muscles on his
brawny arms standing out like linked walnuts.
"Yeah, it worked. What are you going to do now?"
The Professor looked up at him.
"Charley, I'm going to materialize ment, uncomprehending. Then, the untutored
brain, keen, penetrating, direct, suddenly understood. But Small, although a
grown man, was still emotionally a child. He ran out, holding his head in his
hands.
The next morning Randolph had the thing out in the big pasture. It was a strange
sight, the bronzed body bent slightly over the huge box supported on an old
table, his arms holding lightly the body and bow of a violin. He opened the
shutter of the prism, aimed it at the sun and drew the bow across the strings of
the instrument. There was a tearing noise and a faint tinkle and suddenly it was