"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Wanderers and Travellers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

But the creature looks at you with beautiful goggling yellow eyes and
thinks to himself: 'Interesting, obviously a new species. An expedition
should return here and catch a specimen.
He covered his eyes with his hand and started humming a tune. Masha
had her eyes fixed on him and waited. I was waiting, too, mentally
sympathizing with him: it is hard to work when your job hasn't been
properly defined. Very difficult. You grope about in the dark and you get
no pleasure, or satisfaction. I had heard of these astro-archaeologists. It
was impossible to take them seriouslyтАФand no one did.
"But there is reason in cosmos," said Gorbovsky suddenly. "There's no
doubt about that. I know that now. But it isn't what we think it is. Nor the
kind we expect it to be. And we're not looking for it there. Or not the way
we ought. In fact, we don't know what we are seeking."
"That's just it," I thought. "Not that, not there, not that way. That's not
serious, comrades. Just childishnessтАФlooking for the traces of ideas that
once floated about in the air."
"The Voice of the Void, for instance," he continued. "Have you heard of
it? I don't suppose so. Half a century ago people wrote about it, but now
nobody mentions it any more. Because no progress was made, you see, and
since no progress has been made, perhaps there is no Voice? We've got
plenty of these cock-sparrows, you know,тАФ they know nothing themselves
about science, because either they're lazy or haven't been educated
properly, but they have heard that Man is all-powerful. He's all-powerful,
but he can't make head or tail of the Voice of the Void. Dear, dear,
dearтАФwhat a disgrace! We can't, we won't! What cheap
anthropocentrism!"
"What's the Voice of the Void?" asked Masha softly.
"It's a very curious effect. It can be perceived in certain directions in
Space. If you switch your spaceship receiver over to automatic reception,
sooner or later it will tune in to a strange transmission. You hear a calm,
impassive voice repeating the same phrase over and over again in a
strange expressionless tongue like the language of fish. It has been picked
up for many years and it always repeats the same thing. I've heard it and
many others have heard it, but not many talk about it. It's not very
pleasant to think about. You're an unthinkable way from Earth. The Ether
is empty: there are no atmospherics, nothing but slight rustling sounds.
And suddenly this voice is heard. You're on watch, alone. Everyone's
asleep, everything's quiet and eerieтАФand then you hear this voice. It's very
unpleasant, I assure you. There are recordings of it, and many people have
cudgelled their brains and still are to decipher it. But in my opinion it's
futile. There are other riddles. Astronauts could tell a lot, but they don't
like to." He fell silent and then added with a kind of melancholy insistence:
"You've got to realizeтАФ it's not simple. We don't even know what to expect,
you see. We can meet them at any moment. Face to face. And you
knowтАФthey can turn out to be immeasurably higher beings. People talk
about collisions and conflicts, or about different conceptions of what is
human and good, but I don't mind that. I'm afraid of an unparallel
humiliation of humanity, of a gigantic psychological shock. We are so
proud, you know. We've created such a marvellous world, we know such a
lot, we have penetrated into the Great Universe, where we are exploring,