"William Tunning - Survivability" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuning William)

 "Are you sure?" Altborg asked.
"No. But I've taken thirty-one tissue samples. I'm sure I'm right, but I'll have to go down to my lab
and spin down the samples."
"So, quit guessing and spin 'em."
"Thought you'd like to know, be-fore you get off another report to Elsa, conning her about how well
we're doing. I'll be able to prove I'm right."
Altborg was silent for a moment. "Until you prove that you're rightтАФ"
"And prove you're wrong," Olie cut in.
"Until you prove you're right," Altborg repeated evenly, "you're still wrong. So, get to proving. Then,
we'll re-evaluateтАФif we have, in point of fact, anything that needs re-evaluating."
"Look!" snapped Olie. "They're still dying. The extremities freeze, they get gangrene, and they die.
That doesn't take a genius to see. Hell! Even the Gratchii can see that much. And they're not even
hot-shot biochemists. The question is, why? Why are the Yeep in the improved strain, dying off from
fro-zen feet, when the native strain never did?"
"That," Altborg said grumpily, "is what I asked you to find out." "I'm finding it out!" Struan's temper
was rising. "I know what it is. All I'm asking you to do is pur-sue it along an independent mutation. By the
time I've proved I'm right, we'll have failed. The Grat-chii will have sorted it out in their simple little minds
that the Yeep are dying because of us."
"Ridiculous!"
"Sure, it is. The Yeep were dying when we came. We told the Grat-chii we'd save them. Now, the
new strain keeps dying off."
"That's not it, damn it!" Altborg brought the flat of his hand down sharply on the top of the console
and sprang to his feet. "It's a mi-nor genetic drift. You don't have to introduce a new strain to get rid of a
drift!"
"This time you do." Struan's blue eyes were wide now. "If the Gratchii start figuring that they are
losing their Yeep because of 'evil gods who come from the sky,' our goose is cooked on Flannigan. It's
hard enough to keep them from stealing our breeding stock because the Yeep population has shrunk so
badly. But, at least, we have their grudging cooperation. If they start casting us as the villains of the piece,
we've got two choices. Either bring in troops to protect the station, or pack up and go home." "God
damn it!" barked Altborg. He abruptly turned his back on Olie. "All I ask you to do is find the answer to
a simple drift, and you start beating me over the head with geopolitics."
"I'm finding it," Olie growled. "But, I also know what it is. For two weeks now, I've been begging
you to consider it, but no. 'Elsa in-sists that we cover the bases,' you say. That's great. I have no
objec-tion to that. But while we're cov-ering the bases, I could be cutting across the infield and have the
an-swer waiting when the rest of us get to home plate."
"You think we're going to blow this project, don't you?"
"Yes," Olie replied. "Yes, I do."
"Because you've got a pet theory, and can't be bothered following project policy with it."
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Look here, Altborg. You're not the only guy around here with his tail in a crack. As a biochemist,
you're far enough up the ladder that you can stand a project failure once in a while without too much
strain on your career. But if Botany Bay project goes down the pipe, I'm the guy that will have to take
the responsibility. I'm the biomed-gen techтАФthe organic mechanic. If we fail, I won't be called on the
carpet. That's true. But everyone will say that we failed because Olie Struan couldn't handle a simple
mutation in a simple animal with a simple mind. That leaves me pretty well swinging as far as my
reputa-tion in my specialty goes."
"Hogwash!" snapped Altborg. "Not in my book. If that were true, I could just live with it. But it's not
true. The problem with the Yeep is peripheral circulatory defi-ciency."
"You don't know that yet."