"E. E. Doc Smith - Lensman 7 - Masters Of The Vortex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

imagin-
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ingsтАФwhich, if he had thought at all, he would have known hopeless of accomplishment. But he did not think. He simply
acted; dumbly, miserably.
Into a one-way skyway he rocketed; along it over the suburbs and into the trans-continental super-highway. Edging inward,
lane after lane, he reached the 'unlimited' wayтАФunlimited, that is, except for being limited to cars of not less than seven
hundred horsepower, in perfect mechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at not less than one hundred
twenty five miles per hourтАФflashed his number at the control station, and shoved his right foot down to the floor.
Everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Spotter will do a hundred and forty honestly-measured miles in one
honestly-timed hour; but very few drivers have ever found out how fast one of those brutal big souped-up Specials can
wheel. Most people simply haven't got what it takes to open one up.
'Storm' Cloud found out that day. He held that six-thousand-pound Juggernaut onto the road, wide open, for mile after mile
after mile. But it didn't help. Drive as he would, he could not out-run that which rode with him. Beside him and within him
and behind him; for Jo was there.
Jo and the kids, but mostly Jo. It was Jo's car as much as it was his. 'Babe, the big blue ox," was her pet name for it;
because, like Paul Bunyan's fabulous beast, it was pretty nearly six feet between the eyes.
Jo was in the seat beside him. Every dear, every sweet, every luscious, lovely memory of her was there ... and behind him,
just beyond eye-corner visibility, were the three kids. And a whole lifetime of this loomed aheadтАФa vista of emptiness
more vacuous by far than the emptiest reaches of inter-galactic space. Damnation! he couldn't stand much more of ...
High over the roadway, far ahead, a brilliant octagon flared red. That meant 'STOP' in any language. Cloud eased up on the
accelerator; eased down on the brake-pedal; took his place in the line of almost-stalled traffic. There was a barrier and a
trimly-uniformed policeman.
'Sorry, sir,' the officer said, with a sweeping, turning gesture, but you'll have to detour over to Twenty. There's a loose
atomic vortex beside the road up ahead ... Oh, it's you, Doctor Cloud! You can go ahead, of course. Couple of miles yet
before you'll need your armor. They didn't tell us they were sending for you.
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It's just a little new one, and the dope we got was that they were going to shove it over into the badlands with pressors.'
'They didn't send for me.' Cloud tried to smile. 'I'm just driving around. No armor, even, so I might as well go back.'
He turned the Special around. A loose vortexтАФnew. There might be three or four of them, scattered over that many
counties. Sisters of the one that had murdered his familyтАФspawn of that damned Number Eleven that that bungling nitwit
had tried to blow out... Into his mind there leaped a picture, wire-sharp, of Number Eleven as he had last seen it, and
simultaneously an idea hit him like the blow of a fist.
He thought. Really thought, now; intensely and clearly. If he could do itтАФcould actually blow out the atomic flame of an
atomic vortex ... not exactly revenge, but ... it would work ... it would have to workтАФhe'd make it work! And grimly,
quietly, but alive now in every fiber, he drove back to the city almost as fast as he had come away.
If Philip Strong was surprised at Cloud's sudden reappearance in the laboratory he did not show it. Nor did he offer any
comment as his erstwhile assistant went to various lockers and cupboards, assembling coils, tubes, armor, and other
paraphernalia.
'Guess that's all I'll need, chief,' Cloud remarked, finally. 'Here's a blank check. If some of this stuff shouldn't happen to be
in usable condition when I get done with it, fill it out to suit, will you?'
'No.' The Lensman tore up the check just as he had torn up the resignation. 'If you want the stuff for legitimate purposes,
you're on Patrol business and it's the Patrol's risk. But if you're thinking of trying to snuff a vortex, the stuff stays here.
That's out, Storm.'
'But I'm going to really snuff 'em, starting with Number One and taking 'em in order. No suicide.'
'Huh?' Skepticism incarnate. 'It can't be done, except by an almost impossibly fortuitous accident, which is why you
yourself have always been as opposed to such attempts as the rest of us. The charge of explosive must match, within very
narrow limits, the activity of the vortex itself at the instant of detonation; and that activity varies so greatly and so
unpredictably that all attempts at accurate extrapolation have failed. Even the Conference of Scientists couldn't develop a
usable formula,
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