"E. E. Doc Smith - Skylark 1 - Skylark of Space " - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

`Quick, Dr. Watson, the needle?' he exclaimed. Seizing a huge pipette from a rack he
went through the motions of injecting its contents into Seaton's arm.

`It does sound like a combination of science-fiction and Sherlock Holmes,' one of the
visitors remarked.

"`Nobody Holme," you mean,' Scott said, and a general chorus of friendly but skeptical
jibes followed.

`Wait a minute, you hidebound dopes, and I'll show you!' Seaton snapped. He dipped a
short piece of copper wire into his solution.

It did not turn brown; and when he touched it with his conductors, nothing happened. The
group melted away. As they left, some of the men maintained a pitying silence, but
Seaton heard one half-smothered chuckle and several remarks about `cracking under the
strain'.

Bitterly humiliated at the failure of his demonstration, Seaton scowled morosely at the
offending wire. Why should the thing work twice yesterday and not even once today? He
reviewed his theory and could find no flaw in it. There must have been something going
last night that wasn't going now . . . something capable of affecting ultra-fine structure ....
It had to be either in the room or very close by . . . and no ordinary generator or X-ray
machine could possibly have had any effect ....

There was one possibility - only one. The machine in DuQuesne's room next to his own,
the machine he himself had, every once in a while, helped rebuild.


-10-
It was not a cyclotron, not a betatron. In fact, it had as yet no official name. Unofficially,
it was the whatsitron,' or the 'maybetron', or the `itaintsotron' or any one of many less
descriptive and more profane titles which he, DuQuesne, and the other researchers used
among themselves. It did not take up much room. It did not weigh ten thousand tons. It
did not require a million kilowatts of power. Nevertheless it was - theoretically capable of
affecting super-fine structure.

But in the next room? Seaton doubted it.

However, there was nothing else, and it had been running the night before - its glare was
unique and unmistakable. Knowing that DuQuesne would turn his machine on very
shortly, Seaton sat in suspense, staring at the wire. Suddenly the subdued reflection of
the familiar glare appeared on the wall outside his door - and simultaneously the treated
wire turned brown.

Heaving a profound sigh of relief, Seaton again touched the bit of metal with the wires
from the Redeker cell. It disappeared instantaneously with a high whining sound.

Seaton started for the door, to call his neighbors in for another demonstration, but in mid-
stride changed his mind. He wouldn't tell anybody anything until he knew something about
the thing himself. He had to find out what it was, what it did, how and why it did it, and