"Davies, Walter C - Interference" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davies Walter C)

away from the static, he brooded.
"WHAT'S OUR POSITION?" queried Boyle. He was relaxing, Cantrell at the driving
panel.
"Practically ideal," said his partner. "I haven't checked, but we should be well
out of the range of anything from Earth. Going high and fancy, we are--per
second acceleration for two weeks. That's plenty far. Do you want to try out the
polyphone again?"
"Blow off the dust," grunted Boyle, swinging himself from the bunk. Gravity on
the ship was at Earth level; that had meant tons of extra equipment and power
consumption far above normal, but these two on whom the fate of their planet
depended could not be distracted by space sickness and flying soup.
Cantrell readied the polyphone, testing and checking the scores of minute
connections and solders that held the complex creation together. Some he
tightened, others he ripped out and replaced. At length the psychologist
reported: "All ready. Let's make this tryout a good one."
"Right. You stay open and receptive; I'll drive as deep into your mind as I can.
And Cantrell--I know it's not a nice thing to ask, but you'll have to have
complete confidence in me. I don't want you to seal off any sections at all from
me. I want you to stay as open as though you weren't being probed. You're a
specialist; you could close off whatever you wanted to. But we don't know where
the spastitis seeds lie. It may be in some group-unconscious engram or some
especially unsavory crime you've committed and forced yourself to forget. I'll
play square with you, Cantrell. For the sake of the whole planet back
there--don't keep any secret places."
His partner stared at him curiously. "Okay," he said at last. "You know best.
But if you find anything especially nasty, do me the favor of not telling me
about it."
"Agreed," said Boyle with relief. He switched on the machine as they donned the
head sets. The great tube glowed.
Cantrell relaxed in body and mind as he felt the probing fingers sent from his
partners brain pluck away at his gray matter. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation,
rather like a mental Swedish massage. Vaguely, images came through. He stiffened
a little. There shouldn't be any images here, and if there were he shouldn't get
them. For the moment putting aside the receptive mood, he reached out, shutting
his eyes and wrinkling his brow in an effort to encompass the foreign thought
vibrations that were filtering into his skull.
He saw a sky then through the eyes of some person on whose mind he had landed.
The sky was curiously dusky. And with the vision of the sky was a poignant sense
of longing that filled the mind of Cantrell's host. The words of it seemed to
be: "My loved one ! My loved one--on their side. Now we are enemies . . ."
A quick start of alarm. The sky swiveled away, and Cantrell saw through these
other eyes a group of horsemen bearing down on his host. A shrill scream of
terror, an intolerable wave of revulsion and regret, and then the blankness of
death. Cantrell's host had been ridden under the hooves of the horsemen.
The psychologist, not believing what he had experienced, reached out with his
mind and seized on one of the riders. He did know that there was a sense of
guilt in the rider's mind; what it meant he could not tell. He heard a
conversation begun with a shrill, nervous laugh. Then: "Damned rebel--we showed
him."
"Right. Fix them all up like that and this world will be worth living on, sir.