"E. E. Doc Smith - The Galaxy Primes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

the best line. Let's get to work, shall we?'
'Okay. One more bit of information first, though. Any such idea as taking the project away from you simply never
entered my mind.' She gave him a warm and friendly smile as she walked over to the file-cabinets.
For hours then, they worked, each scanning tape after tape. At midday they ate a light lunch. Shortly thereafter,
Garlock put away his reader and all his loose tapes. 'Are you getting anywhere, Belle? I'm not.'
'Yes, but of course planets are probably pretty much the same everywhere - Tellus-type ones, anyway. Is all the
Xeno-logy as cockeyed as I'm afraid it must be?'
'At least. The one basic assumption was that there are no human beings other than Tellurians. From that they derive
the secondary assumption that humanoid types will be scarce. From there they scattered out in all directions. So I'll
have to roll my own. I've got to see Atterlin, anyway. I'll be back for supper. So long.'
'Be good - Clee as though you could be anything else! Oh, simon-pure monogamy, how wonderful you are!' She
snickered gleefully as Garlock strode out.
At the Port Office, Grand Lady Neldine met him even more enthusiastically then before; taking both his hands and
pressing them against her firm, almost-bare breasts. She tried to hold back as Garlock led her along the corridor.
'I have an explanation, and in a sense an apology, for you, Grand Lady Neldine, and for you, Governor Atterlin,' he
thought carefully. 'I would have explained yesterday, but I had no understanding of the situation here until our
anthropologist, Lola Montandon, elucidated it very laboriously to me. She herself, a scientist highly trained in that
specialty, could grasp | it only by referring back to somewhat similar situations which
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may have existed in the remote past - so remote a past that the concept is known only to specialists and is more than
half mythical, even to them.'
He went on to give in detail the sexual customs, obligations, and limitations of Lola's purely imaginary civilization.
"Then it isn't that you don't want to, but you can't?' the lady asked, incredulously.
'Mentally, I have no desire. Physically, the act is impossible,' he assured her.
'What a shame!' Her thought was a peculiar mixture of disappointment and relief: disappointment in that she was not
to bear this man's super-child; relief in that, after all, she had not personally failed - if she couldn't have this perfectly
wonderful man herself, no other woman except his wife could ever have him, either. But what a shame to waste such
a man as that on any one woman!
'I see ... I see - wonderful!' Atterlin's thought was not at all incredulous, but vastly awed. 'It is of course logical that
as the power of mind increases, physical matters become less and less important. But you will have much to give us;
we may perhaps have some small things to give you. If we could visit your Tellus, perhaps ...?'
'That also is impossible. We four in the Pleiades are lost in space. This is the first planet we have visited on our first
trial of a new method - new to us, at least - of interstellar travel. We missed our objective, probably by many millions
of parsecs, and it is quite possible that we four will never be able to find our way back. We are trying now, by
charting the galaxies throughout billions of cubic parsecs of space, to find merely the direction in which our own
galaxy lies.'
'What a concept! What stupendous minds! But such immense distances, sir ... what can you possibly be using for a
space-drive?'
'None, as you understand the term. We travel by instantaneous translation, by means of something we call "Gunther".
I am not at all sure that I can explain it to you satisfactorily, but I will try to do so, if you wish.'
'Please do so, sir, by all means.'
Garlock opened the highest Gunther cells of his mind. This was nothing as elementary as telepathy, teleportation,
tele-
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kinesis, or the like - it was the pure, raw Gunther of the Gunther Drive, which even he made no pretense of
understanding fully. He opened those cells and pushed that knowledge at the two Hodellian minds.
The result was just as instantaneous and just as catastrophic as Garlock had expected. Both blocks went up almost
instantly.
'Oh, no!' Atterlin exclaimed, his face turning white.
The girl shrieked once, covered her face with her hands, and collapsed on the floor.