"Robert Reed - Eight Episodes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

 Eight Episodes
by Robert Reed


"Mine. The mudstoneтАФ"
"You mean it's artificial...?"
"Looks so," she answered.
He said, "Huh."
She finished buttoning her shirt, the back of her left hand
wiping at the corner of her mouth.
"Where?" Smith asked.
She gave the parent rock's identification code.
"No, the metal ball," he interrupted. "Where is it now?"
"My desk drawer. In a white envelope."
"And how big?"
"Two grains of rice, about."
Then, one last time, the main character said, "Huh." And,
finally, without any interest showing in his face, he fastened
his belt.
****


The next three episodes covered not days, but several
months. Again, none of the scientific work was explained, and
nothing resembling a normal plotline emerged from the
routine and the tedious. The increasingly tiny audience
watched Dr. Smith and two of his graduate students working
with an object almost too small to be resolved on the
screenтАФanother significant problem with the series. Wouldn't
a human-sized artifact have made a greater impact? The
ball's metal shell proved to be an unlikely alloy of nickel and
aluminum. Cosmic radiation and tiny impacts had left the
telltale marks one would expect after a long drifting journey
through space. Using tiny lasers, the researchers carefully cut
6
 Eight Episodes
by Robert Reed


through the metal shell, revealing a diamond interior. Then
the diamond heart absorbed a portion of the laser's energy,
and once charged, it powered up its own tiny light show.
Fortunately a nanoscopic camera had been inserted into the
hole, and the three scientists were able to record what they
witnessedтАФa rush of complex images coupled with an
increasingly sophisticated array of symbols.
"What is this?" they kept asking one another.
"Maybe it's language," Mary guessed. Correctly, as it
happened. "Someone's teaching us ... trying to ... a new
language."