"Asimov, Isaac - Anniversary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

"I tell you I don't know. He used a name once and I told you
about that. I don't think it's significant."

"We don't have the name in our records, sir."

"Well, you should have. Uh, what was that name? An optikoo,
that's it."

"With a K?"

"C or K. I don't know or care. Now, please, I do not wish to be
disturbed again about this. Good-bye." He was still mumbling quer-
ulously when the line went dead.

Brandon was pleased.

Moore said, "Mark, that was the stupidest thing you could have
done, claiming a fraudulent identity on the tube is illegal. If he wants
to make trouble for you—"

"Why should he? He's forgotten about it already. But don't you
see, Warren? Trans-space has been asking him about this. He kept
saying he'd explained all this before."

"All right. But you'd assumed that much. What else do you
know?"

"We also know," said Brandon, "that Quentin's gadget was called
an optikon."

"Fitzsimmons didn't sound certain about that. And even so, since
we already know be was specializing in optics toward the end, a
name like optikon does not push us any further forward."

"And Trans-space Insurance is looking either lor the optikon or
for papers concerning it. Maybe Quentin kept the details in his hat
and just had a model of the instrument. After all, Shea said they
were picking up metal objects. Right?"
"There was a bunch of metal junk in the pile," agreed Shea.
"They'd leave that in space if it were papers they were after. So
that's what we want, an instrument that might be called on opiikon."

"Even if all your theories were correct, Mark, and we're looking
for an optikon, the search is absolutely hopeless now," said Moore
flatly. "I doubt that more than ten per cent at the debris would re-
main in orbit about Vesta. Vesta's escape velocity is practically
nothing. It was just a lucky thrust in a lucky direction and at a lucky
velocity that put our section of the wreck in orbit. The rest is gone,
scattered all over the Solar System in any conceivable orbit about