"Eric Frank Russell - The Witness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

"I rode on a rock," scrawled Maeth.
"There!" Mr. Prosecutor pointed sardonically at the black-board. "Defendant rode
on a rock. That is the escape from a self-created impasseтАФa rock, no less!" He
frowned at the box. "You must have ridden a long, long way."
"I did."
"So you sat your ship on this rock and saved fuel by let-ting it carry you many
millions of miles? Have you any idea of the mathematical odds against finding a
wandering aster-oid in any section of space?"
"
They are very large," admitted Maeth.
"Yet you discovered the very asteroid to bring you all the way here? Most
astonishing spacemanship, is it not?"
"It did not bring me all the way. It brought me most of the way."
"All right," agreed Mr. Prosecutor, with airy contempt. "Ninety-nine millions
instead of one hundred millions or whatever the distance is supposed to be. It is still
amazing."
"
Moreover," continued Maeth, writing steadily, "I did not select one to bring me
here, as you imply. I thankfully used the only visible rock to take me anywhere. I had
no specific destination. I fled into the void at random, putting my trust in the fates."
"So some other rock might have borne you some place else, might it not?"
 "Or no place at all," Maeth put morbidly. "The fates were kind."
"Don't be too sure of that." Mr. Prosecutor hooked thumbs in vest pockets and
studied the other with sinister expression. "If your real purposes, your real motives
are in fact those which have been attributed to you by our ever-alert news-services, it
is to be expected that you would have a cover-up story replete with plausibility. You
have given this court such a story but have offered no concrete evidence in proof.
We are left with nothing but your unsupported word тАФand the word of an ill-formed
alien, an unknown quantity, at that!" He paused, ended, "Can you not submit to this
court something more material than a series of bald asserta-tions?"
"I have no way of combating disbelief," wrote Maeth, slowly and tiredly, "except
with trust."
Mr. Prosecutor countered that one by striking hard and ruthlessly. "How many
others of your kind are now upon this world, following their dastardly designs while
you distract at-tention by posing in the full glare of publicity?"
The court, the hidden audience, had not thought of that. Half a dozen reporters
quietly kicked themselves for not hav-ing conceived its first and played it up for all it
was worth. It had been assumed from the beginning that the alien in their hands was
the only one on the planet. Yet there might well be more, a dozen, a hundred, hiding
in the less frequented places, skulking in the shadows, biding their time. People
stared at each other and fidgeted uneasily.
"I came alone," Maeth put on the board.
"I accept that statement. It may be the only truthful one you have made. Experts
report that your vessel is a single-seater scout, so obviously you came in it alone.
But how many other vessels came about the same time?"
"None."
"It would be a comfort to think so," remarked Mr. Prose-cutor, thereby
discomforting his listeners. "Doubtless, your world has many other ships, much
larger and more powerful than yours?"
"Many," admitted Maeth. "But they can go no farther or faster. They can only