"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 19 - The Quillian Sector" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

invented can ease the weight of boredom."

An alien concept which Caradoc could understand only on an
intellectual level How could anyone ever grow bored in a universe
filled with an infinity of questions awaiting answers? Even the
cabin in which they sat offered endless scope for mental exercise
connected with its structure, stress factors, cubic capacity,
resonance, relationships of planes and divergences from the
mathematical norm.

Bored?

No cyber could ever be that while two atoms remained to pose
a problem of interrelationship proximities. While life remained
to set the eternal question of what and why it existed at all.

But lesser beings needed the convenience of quick-time; the
drug which slowed the metabolism so that normal days passed in
apparent minutes. A means to lessen the tedium of ship life on
journeys between the stars.

The steward brought it an hour later when the vessel was
aligned on its target star and safely on its way. He nodded to
Caradoc and, without a word, lifted the hypogun he carried,
aimed it at Bochner's throat and pressed the release. Air blasted
the charge through skin, fat and muscle directly into the
bloodstream. Bochner should have immediately turned into the
rigid semblance of a statue. Instead, he slumped and fell
unconscious on the bunk.

"Minimum dose as ordered, sir," said the steward. "Another?"

"No. You have all that is necessary? Good. Stand aside while I
work."

Caradoc turned the unconscious man on his back, handling
the bulk with surprising strength. From a packet the steward
handed him, he took a slender instrument and a small capsule
together with a can of anesthetizing spray fitted with a slender
nozzle. Thrusting the nozzle into Bochner's right nostril, Caradoc
hit the release, numbing and sterilizing the inner membranes.
With the instrument, he quested the nasal passage and located
the entrance to the sinus cavity. Removing the instrument, he
fitted the capsule to its end, thrust the small package into the
nostril, pressed and pushed it into the sinus. There it expanded,
thin filaments attaching themselves with minute hooks to the
inner lining, they and the capsule both coated with numbing and
sterile compounds.

As he withdrew the spray after a final treatment Caradoc said