"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

VisitationтАФit's described in full detail there. His version is that the radiant was discovered by a
schoolboy, that a college student published the coordinates, but that for some unknown reason it was
named after me."
"Yes, many amazing things can happen with a discovery. Would you mind explaining it to our
listeners, Dr. Pilman?"
"The Pilman Radiant is simplicity itself. Imagine that you spin a huge globe and you start firing bullets
into it. The bullet holes would lie on the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point of what you call my
first serious discovery lies in the simple fact that all six Visitation Zones are situated on the surface of our
planet as though someone had taken six shots at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the
Earth-Deneb line. Deneb is the alpha star in Cygnus. The point in the heavens from which, so to speak,
the shots came is the Pilman Radiant."
"Thank you, doctor. My fellow Harmonites! Finally we have heard a clear explanation of the Pilman
Radiant! By the way, the day before yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the Visitation. Dr. Pilman,
would you care to say a few words to your fellow townsmen on the subject?"
"What in particular interests you? Remember, I wasn't in Harmont at the time."
"That makes it even more interesting to hear what you felt when your hometown became the site of an
invasion from a supercivilization from space."
"To tell the truth, I first thought it was a hoax. It was hard to imagine that anything like that could
possibly happen in our little Harmont. Gobi or Newfoundland seemed more likely than Harmont."
"Nevertheless, you finally had to believe it."
"FinallyтАФyes."
"And then?"
"It suddenly occurred to me that Harmont and the other five Visitation ZonesтАФsorry, my mistake,
there were only four other sites known at the timeтАФthat all of them fit on a very smooth curve. I
calculated the coordinates and sent them to Nature. "
"And you weren't at all concerned with the fate of your hometown?"
"Not really. You see, by then I had come to believe in the Visitation, but I simply could not force
myself to believe the hysterical reports about burning neighborhoods and monsters that selectively
devoured only old men and children and about bloody battles between the invulnerable invaders and the
highly vulnerable but steadfastly courageous Royal Tank Units."
"You were right. I remember that our reporters really botched the story. But let's return to science.
The discovery of the Pilman Radiant was the first, but probably not the last, of your contributions to our
knowledge of the Visitation!"
"The first and last."
"But surely you have been carefully following the international research in the Visitation Zones?"
"Yes. Once in a while I read the Reports."
"You mean the Reports of the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures?"
"Yes."
 "And what, in your opinion, has been the most important discovery in these thirty years?"
"The fact of the Visitation itself."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The fact of the Visitation itself is the most important discovery not only of the past thirty years but of
the entire history of mankind. It's not so important to know just who these visitors were. It's not
important to know where they came from, why they came, why they spent so little time here, or where
they disappeared to since. The important thing is that humanity now knows for sure: we are not alone in
the universe. I fear that the Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures will never be fortunate enough to make a
more fundamental discovery."
"This is very fascinating, Dr. Pilman, but actually I was thinking more of advances and discoveries of a
technological nature. Discoveries that our earth scientists and engineers could use. After all, many very
important scientists have proposed that the discoveries made in the Visitation Zones are capable of