"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 12 - Eloise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

"To appear on Paiyar and, later, on Chard." Wain was acid.
"Once again we learned of his movements too late. He left on a
trading vessel and now we can do nothing but wait."

"Nothing?"

Wain blinked. Engrossed in his laboratory duties he had lost
the razor-keenness of his brain; the one great attribute of every
cyber had become dull through disuse.

"Master?"

"We know where he was last seen," said Nequal. "We know on
which ship he left. Yandron, what is your prediction as to his
present whereabouts?"
 An exercise which the aide had done before, but always faced
with the baffling encumbrance of random motion. One ship,
moving among countless worlds, one man among so many. And
Dumarest had been clever. He had not taken a commercial line
which had regular ports of call. A free trader went where profit
was to be found.

He said so and Nequal, without turning, gave him no chance
to regain his stability.

"No motion is truly random," he said. "Even the shiftings of
molecules of gas can be predicted after a fashion. And here we
are dealing with a man. A clever, resourceful man, but a man
just the same. And even a free trader follows a predictable path.
The Tophier left with rare and costly oils and perfumes from
Chard. Eriule would be the most probable market. They produce
mutated seeds and luxury goods aimed at agricultural cultures.
The probability that the Tophier obtained a cargo of such goods
is of a high order. A prediction of 89 per cent. There are three
such worlds to which they could have been taken."

The depiction expanded still more as Nequal touched the
control. Now suns could be seen, worlds, satellites; dangerous
proximities of conflicting energies which any ship would wish to
avoid. He studied them, building on known factors, judging,
eliminating; selecting the worlds on which the vessel had most
probably landed, extrapolating from available data and
predicting where next it would be.

An exercise in sheer intellect aimed at the one, sole object of
trapping a man.

DumarestтАФwho held the secret which, once regained, would
give the Cyclan total domination.