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

These two, Garlock and James, were heads of departments of, and under iron-clad contract to, vast Solar System
Enterprises, Inc., the only concern able and willing to attempt the building of the first starship.
However, Alonzo P. Ferber, Chancellor of S.S.E., would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a
bird-brained scheme. Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicity that Firsts were in fact tops in Gunther ability;
that these few self-styled 'Operators' and 'Prime Operators' were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots. Since he
could not feel that so-called 'Operator Field', no such thing did or could exist. No Gunther starship could ever,
possibly, work.
He did loan Garlock and James to the Galaxians, but that was as far as he would go. For salaries and labor, for
research and materials, for trials and for errors; the Society paid and paid and paid.
Thus the starship Pleiades had cost the Galaxian Society almost a thousand million credits.
Garlock and James had worked on the ship since its inception. They were to be of the crew; for over a year it had
been taken for granted that they would be its only crew.
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As the Pleiades neared completion, however, it became clearer and clearer that the displacement-control presented
an unsolved, and quite possibly an insoluble, problem. It was mathematically certain that, when the Gunther field
went on, the ship would be displaced instantaneously to some location in space having precisely the Gunther
coordinates required by that particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into
the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet - which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was
close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return to Earth a simple matter.
Since the Gunther Effect did in fact annihilate distance, however, another group of mathematicians, led by Garlock
and James, proved with equal rigor that the point of destination was no more likely to be any one given Gunther
point than any other one of the myriads of billions of equiguntherial points undoubtedly existing throughout our
entire normal space-time continuum.
The two men would go anyway, of course. Carefully-calculated pressures would make them go. It was neither
necesary nor desirable, however, for them to go alone.
Wherefore the planets and satellites were combed again this time to select two women - the two most highly-gifted
psioni-cists in the eighteen-to-twenty-five age group. Thus, if the Pleiades returned successfully to Earth, well and
good. If she did not, the four selectees would found, upon some far-off world, a race much abler than the humanity of
Earth; since eighty-three percent of Earth's dwellers had psionic grades lower than Four. This search, with its
attendant fanfare and studiedly blatant publicity, was so planned and engineered that the selected women did not
arrive at the spaceport until a bare fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of takeoff. Thus it made no difference
whether the women liked the men or not, or vice versa; or whether or not any of them really wanted to make the trip.
Pressures were such that each of them had to go, whether he or she wanted to or not.
'Cut the rope, Jim, and let the old bucket drop,' Garlock said. 'Not too close. Before we make any kind of contact
we'll have to do some organizing. These instruments' - he waved at 12
the console - 'show that ours is the only Operator Field in this whole region of space. Hence, there are no Operators
and no Primes. That means that from now until we get back to Tellus ...'
'// we get back to Tellus,' Belle corrected, sweetly. 'Until we get back to Tellus there will be no Gunthering aboard
this ship ...'
'What?' Belle broke in again. 'Have you lost your mind?' 'There will be little if any lepping, and nothing else at all. At
the table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed. We will pick up things, such as cigarettes, with our
fingers. We will carry lighters and use them. When we go from place to place, we will walk. Is that clear?'
'You seem to be talking English,' Belle said, 'but the words don't make sense.'
'I didn't think you were that stupid.' Their eyes locked and held. Then Garlock grinned savagely. 'Okay. You tell her,
Lola, in words of as few syllables as possible.'
'Why, to get used to it, of course,' Lola explained, while Belle glared at Garlock. 'So as not to reveal anything we
don't have to."
'Excellent, Miss Montandon - all monosyllables except two. That should make it clear, even to Miss Bellamy.' He
paused, glancing calmly at Belle's glare, then said, 'In emergencies, of course, anything goes. We will now proceed
with business.'