"Allen, Roger Macbride - Allies And Aliens 1 - Torch Of Honor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)
"Are you truly from the League?" There was amazement and hope in her voice.
"Truly."
"We never really dared to think you'd come...." A sudden thought came to her. "How many men do you have?"
I thought of the experimental matter transmitter. "If we're lucky, about 5,000."
She rushed out of the room. I could tell I had made her day.
There was a general bustle of activity, during which my orderly calmly kept the laser aimed straight at my chest. Someone came in to photograph me and take my fingerprints. I never did find out exactly why.
My nurse seemed to be trying to get someone in charge to pay attention to her, She was in and out two or three times, pacing indecisively and trying to figure out if I was telling the truth.
Finally the door swept open and a very dignified, calm sort of medical man came in. Clearly, Someone In Charge had arrived. He shooed the orderly out and drew up a chair alongside my bed. "Nurse Tulkaas has said some extremely interesting things about you, Commander," he said in very precise English. "Where are these men you spoke of?"
"About four light weeks away, I'd guess."
He didn't bat an eye, but I could see Nurse Tulkaas's face collapse in disappointment. The doctor said, "You are not aware of the missile system?"
"We should be able to get our troops around it."
"How?"
I hesitated. "Doctor, could I get out of this bed and discuss this at a table? One with a big lunch on it? This is a bit complicated, and I haven't had a real meal in days."
"Of course."
"Great." I hopped out of bed-and hopped right back in. Finnish hospital garb does not include pants. The doctor almost smiled at my discomfort. "Nurse, could you get Commander Larson a robe out of the closet?"
The nurse got one and performed some maneuver with it that got me into the robe without getting me out of bed. Long practice, no doubt. I tied it around my waist and got out of bed again. "One other thing," I said. "Could you have a hypnotist join us? I didn't dare carry any paper or film, but I have a lot of information. If I was caught by your Guardian friends, we wanted to make sure I didn't talk. The information is blocked from my conscious by about three separate post-hypnotic commands. You'll even have to put me in a light trance to get the keying words out of me."
"I'll have Mr. Kendriel attend us." The doctor led me out into the hall.
"This is the final keying, Commander. When I speak the appropriate word, you will awaken with full conscious memory of the information you have been carry-ing."
I could hear the voice from far away, but it didn't seem to mean much to me.
"I will count backwards until I reach one, and then speak your key word. Five, four, three, two, one-Mannerheim. Now, then, Do you remember it all?"
Of course I did, I thought dully. "Yes."
"Good. Now, I will count forward to three and tell you to awaken. When I do, you will awaken and still remember everything. Ready? One, two three-wake up!"
"Commander, if you could explain what all this is about?"
"In a moment, Doctor. I have a lot of details to remember. Please hand me that map of the planet's surface, if you would."
The last thing in the hypnotic memory had been the coordinates of the point where the receiver had to be built: latitude and longitude. I examined the map for a moment, then ran one finger down the right longitude line and another done the right latitude.
Then I did it again.
And again.
The coordinates were wrong-45°W 15°N was under water.
I sat and stared at the map. I closed my eyes and concentrated. Yes, I had remembered the coordinates properly. I checked the map again. Said a few choice phrases. Bit my nails. But it was still under water, nowhere near shore.
"Commander! What is the matter?" the doctor asked.
"This map is accurate." I didn't even bother to make it a question.
"Yes, of course."
I turned and faced the doctor-who still hadn't given me his name. "This will take a moment to explain. The League developed, very recently, a matter transmitter.
It is still experimental. But they had enough confidence to take the chance of using it. My ship was intercepted by a drone that carried the key components of the receiver unit. I was ordered here. The transmitter is a much more precisely designed system, and requires a great deal more power. The United States Space Craft Mayflower, which has the transmitter itself aboard, has used it to beam 5,000 men and their equipment toward us at the speed of light. They were transmitted from far outside this solar system. They were aimed to be received at 45°W 15°N. They must arrive at that point, or they cannot arrive at all. That point is under water, nowhere near land."
"There is no Finnish shipping. The Guardians control it all."
"And no ship could be big enough for 5,000 men," I said.
"This is amazing! They have really transmitted those men toward us?" He turned and asked the hypnotist, "Is that truly possible?"
Mr. Kendriel shrugged. "In theory, yes. The idea has kicked around since the invention of the C2 drive. It would be an application of the same principle. To oversimplify, the effect that puts a ship into superlight speed is rotated through 90 degrees, producing a normal C2, except that it is static in space, or more accurately, adjacent to every point in our space. The stumbling block has been to find a way to lock on to that bubble, track it, and pull it back into normal space in a controlled manner. I imagine that they've licked that problem." Mr. Kendriel had done some reading, it seemed.
"Remarkable. What a wonderful invention...." The doctor seemed to consider the possibilities for a moment. Then he came back to the problem at hand. "But why can't they arrive anywhere else? Is the beam that carried them that tight?"
"It isn't the width of the guide beam that is the trouble. It's the Doppler shift. The point from which the guide beam is sent and at which it is received must be dead in space to each other. Exactly so. The point 45°W 15°N will be moving at exactly the right speed at the moment the radio signal arrives at New Finland. The rotation of the planet around the sun, its revolution around its own axis-even the perturbations caused by this satellite- were all accounted for precisely. If the signal is at all distorted at reception, the men will be-distorted."
Would they appear as giants? Pygmies? Inside out? With sine waves imposed onto the cells of their corpses?
We couldn't receive them. I shut my eyes and wondered what it was like to step into a machine, expecting to appear magically on a new world ... and never come out. A quick and painless death, but one that easy, in a frightening way, unknown to those who died. Would they be truly dead, frozen for a moment of subjective time that would last for all eternity? Or just-gone?
Nurse Tulkaas knit her fingers into each other and stood, staring at nothing. "We had hope for a brief moment. Now it is gone. Your League must learn to read maps before it sends men over radio waves."
"Karina, that is unfair," the doctor objected. "It was the coordinate shift that did it. It's quite simple, Commander. When we first mapped this world, we assigned a rather arbitrary set of coordinates to it. When it came time to build, one of the prime city sites lay square on what would have been the planetary dateline. Rather than give up the site, it was seen as a better solution to shift the assigned lines of longitude. Your troops are targeted to what is no doubt an excellent site-as located on an old map."
"And now the men are as good as dead," I said.
Nurse Tulkaas suddenly burst out, "Why have you done this mad thing?"
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