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

of its sociology that you not only should be, but actually are being, held in quarantine.'
'What?'
'Exactly. One race I know of has been inspecting -you regularly for several hundreds of your years. They will not
make contact with you, or allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond the
irresponsible-baby stage. Thus, about two and a half of your years ago, a starship of that race sent down a sensing
element - unmanned, of course - to check your state of development. Brother Sovig votalized it with an atomic
missile.'
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'We did not do it," the dictator declared. 'It was the warmongering capitalists.'
'You contemptible idiot,' Oarlock said. 'Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds
linked to your own and to mine?'
'We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer.'
'Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So here's something else for you to think about, Brother
Sovig, with whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot down that senser, the starship did
not rataliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot us down, we took some slight
action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the situation. Listen carefully now, and remember - it is very
possible that the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warning than you give,
blow this whole planet into a ball of incandescent gas.'
'Can that actually be done?' the scientist asked. For the first time, he became really interested in the proceedings.
'Very easily, Doctor Cheswick,' Garlock replied. 'We could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small
cost. You are familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?'
'Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very satisfactory mathematics.'
'Well, we have at our disposal a field some...'
'Hold it, Clee,' James warned. 'Do you want to put out that kind of stuff around here?'
'Ummmm ... What do you think?'
James studied Cheswick's mind. 'Better than I thought," he decided. 'He has made two really worthwhile intuitions -
a genius type. He's been working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He's almost got it, but
you know intuitions of that caliber can't be scheduled. He might get it tomorrow - or never. I'd say push him over the
hump.'
'Okay with me. We'll take a vote - one blackball kills it Brownie? Just the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at
application, but no technological data.'
'I say give it to him. He's earned it. Besides, he isn't young any more and may die before he gets it, and that would
lose
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them two or three hundred years.' 'Belle?'
'In favour. Shall I drop the linkage? No,' she answered her own question. 'No other minds here will have any idea of
what it means, and it may do some of them a bit of good to see one of their own minds firing on more than one
barrel.'
'Thank you, Galaxians.' The scientist's mind had been quivering with eagerness. 'I am inexpressibly glad that you
have found me worthy of so much help.'
Garlock entered Cheswick's mind. First he impressed, indelibly, six symbols and their meanings. Second, a long and
intricate equation, which the scientist studied avidly.
During the ensuing pause Garlock cut the president and chief of staff out of the linkage. 'We have just given
Cheswick a basic formula. In a couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you will really begin
to go up. There's nothing secret about it - in fact, I'd advise full publication - but even so it might be a smart idea to
give him both protection and good working conditions. Brains like his are apt to be centuries apart on any world.'
'But this is ... it could be ... it must be?' Cheswick exclaimed. 'I never would have formulated thatl It isn't quite
implicit, of course, but from this, there derives the existence of, and the necessity for, electrogravitics - an entirely
new field of reality and experiment in science!'
'There does indeed,' Garlock agreed, 'and it is far indeed from being implicit. You leaped a tremendous gap. And yes,