Archiwum
- Index
- Roberts Nora Miłość na deser 01 Miłość na deser
- Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg The Ugly Little Boy
- Kościuszko Robert Wojownik Trzech Czasów 3 Strażnicy
- Roberts Nora Święte grzechy 2 Bezwstydna cnota
- Maklowicz Robert Podroze Kulinarne AG
- 02.Robert Ludlum Dziedzictwo Scarlattich
- 63. Roberts Nora Od pierwszego wejrzenia
- Howard Robert E. Bogowie Bal Sagoth
- Howard Robert E. Ludzie Czarnego Kregu
- Howard Robert E. Dolina Grozy(1)
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- lafemka.pev.pl
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
of the medieval magicians. It appeared that they never wrote down all
of a procedure; some essential - so the reports ran and so his
experience confirmed - was handed down verbally from master to student.
His experience with Schneider confirmed this; there were things, attitudes,
which must needs be taught directly.
He regretfully set out to learn what he must unassisted.
'Gosh, Uncle Gus, i'm glad to see you!'
'Decided I'd better look in on you. You haven't phoned me in weeks.'
'That's true, but I've been working awfully hard, Uncle Gus.'
'Too hard, maybe. Mustn't overdo it. Lemme see your tongue.~
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'I'm OK.' But Waldo stuck out his tongue just the same; Grimes looked
at it and felt his pulse.
'You seem to be ticking all right. Learning anything?'
'Quite a lot. I've about got the matter of the deKalbs whipped.'
'That's good. The message you sent Stevens seemed to indicate that you
had found some hookup that could be used on my pet problem too.~
'In a way, yes; but around from the other end. It begins to seem as if
it was your problem which created Stevens's problem.'
'Huh?'
'I mean it. The symptoms caused by ultra short-wave radiation may have
had a lot to do with the erratic behaviour of the deKalbs.'
'How?'
'I don't know myself. But I've rigged up a working hypothesis and I'm
checking it.'
'Hm-m-m. Want to talk about it?'
'Certainly - to you.' Waldo launched into an account of his interview with
Schneider, concerning which he had not previously spoken to Grimes, even
though Grimes had made the trip with him. He never, as Grimes knew,
discussed anything until he was ready to.
The story of the third set of deKalbs to be infected with the incredible
writhings caused Grimes to raise his eyebrows. 'Mean to say you caught
on how to do that?'
'Yes indeed. Not "how", maybe, but I can do it. I've done it more than
once. I'll show you.' He drifted away towards one side of the great room
where several sets of deKalbs, large and small, were mounted, with their
controls, on temporary guys.
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'This fellow over on the end, it just came in today. Broke down. I'll give
it Gramps Schneider's hocus-pocus and fix it. Wait a minute. I forgot to
turn on the power.'
He returned to the central ring which constituted his usual locus and
switched on the beamcaster. Since the ship itself effectively shielded
anything in the room from outer radiation, he had installed a small power
plant and caster similar in type to NAPA's giant ones; without it he
would have had no way to test the reception of the deKalbs.
He rejoined Grimes and passed down the line of deKalbs, switching on the
activizing circuits. All save two began to display the uncouth motions he
had begun to think of as the Schneider flex.
'That one on the far end,' he remarked, 'is in operation but doesn't flex.
It has never broken down, so it's never been treated. It's my control;
but this one' - he touched the one in front of him - 'needs fixing.
Watch me.'
'What are you going to do?'
'To tell the truth, I don't quite know. But I'll do it.' He did not know.
All he knew was that it was necessary to gaze down the antennae, think
about them reaching into the Other World, think of them reaching for power,
reaching - The antennae began to squirm.
'That's all there is to it - strictly between ourselves. I learned it from
Schneider.' They had returned to the centre of the sphere, at Grimes's
suggestion, on the pretext of wanting to get a cigarette. The squirming
deKalbs made him nervous, but he did not want to say so.
'How do you explain it?'
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'I regard it as an imperfectly understood phenomenon of the Other Space.
I know less about it than Franklin knew about lightning. But I will know-
I will! I could give Stevens a solution right now for his worries if I
knew some way to get around your problem too.'
'I don't see the connexion.'
'There ought to be some way to do the whole thing through the Other Space.
Start out by radiating power into the Other Space and pick it up from there.
Then the radiation could not harm human beings. It would never get at them;
it would duck around them. I've been working on my caster, but with no luck
so far. I'll crack it in time.'
'I hope you do. Speaking of that, isn't the radiation from your own caster
loose in this room?'
'Yes.'
'Then I'll put on my shield coat. It's not good for you either.'
'Never mind. I'll turn it off.' As he turned to do so there was the sound of
a sweet, chirruping whistle. Baldur barked. Grimes turned to see what caused it.
'What,' he demanded, 'have you got there?'
'Huh? Oh, That's my cuckoo clock. Fun, isn't it?' Grimes agreed that it was,
although he could not see much use for it. Waldo had mounted it on the edge
of a light metal hoop which spun with a speed just sufficient to produce a
centrifugal force of one g.
'I rigged it up,' Waldo continued, 'while I was bogged down in this problem
of the Other Space. Gave me something to do.'
'This "Other Space" business - I still don't get it.'
'Think of another continuum much like our own and superposed on it the way
you might lay one sheet of paper on another. The two spaces aren't identical,
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but they are separated from each other by the smallest interval you can
imagine - coextensive but not touching - usually. There is an absolute one-to-
one, point-for-point correspondence, as I conceive it, between the two spaces,
but they are not necessarily the same size or shape.'
'Hey? Come again - they would have to be.'
'Not at all. Which has the larger number of points in it? A line an inch long,
or a line a mile long?'
'A mile long, of course.'
'No. They have exactly the same number of points. Want me to prove it?'
'I'll take your word for it. But I never studied that sort of maths.'
'All right. Take my word for it then. Neither size nor shape is any
impediment to setting up a full, point-for-point correspondence between
two spaces. Neither of the words is really appropriate. "Size" has to do
with a space's own inner structure, its dimensions in terms of its own
unique constants. "Shape" is a matter which happens inside itself - or at
least not inside our space - and has to do with how it is curved, open or
closed, expanding or contracting.'
Grimes shrugged. 'It all sounds like gibberish to me.' He returned to
watching the cuckoo clock swing round and round its wheel.
'Sure it does,' Waldo assented cheerfully. 'We are limited by our experience.
Do you know how I think of the Other World?' The question was purely
rhetorical. 'I think of it as about the size and shape of an ostrich egg,
but nevertheless a whole universe, existing side by side with our own, from
here to the farthest star. I know that it's a false picture, but it helps
me to think about it that way.'
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'I wouldn't know,' said Grimes, and turned himself around in the air. The
compound motion of the clock's pendulum was making him a little dizzy.
'Say! I thought you turned off the caster?'
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