"Lester Del Rey - Nerves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

muffler to give a sound of false power. Well, maybe the girls at school who
found such things attractive would outgrow it; Doc hoped so, though he had his
doubts. Or maybe-he thought again-he was just growing old.
He watched the houses along the fifteen-mile road change from apartments to
the endless rows of development huts that had grown up on all sides of
Kimberly- prefabricated boxes with convertible rooms, set down on tiny lots
that looked alike. Most of them showed evidence that the trailer had been
their ancestor, and a few even had the wheels on which they'd been shipped-
possibly indicating a lack of faith in the permanence of the owner's
employment.
The road was jammed, and in places they slowed to a crawl. From a neighboring
car, Doc heard the swearing against "ignorant Hoosiers" that was still almost
a trademark of some Missourians. A horn blasted out and another driver yelled,
"Get off the road, you damned atomjerks! We don't want you here!"
Atomjerks! Three years ago, being an atomjack was almost enough to insure good
credit and respect. Times, it seemed, had changed.
There were other significant changes as they began to near the plant. More and
more Vacant signs were in front of houses. Once there had been a premium on
locations along the highway, but now apparently the nearness to the atom plant
was changing all that.
He was almost relieved when they swung off the main road onto the private
highway that led to the main gates. The sprawling, haphazard cluster of
utilitarian buildings, offices and converter-housings covered acres of ground
and was set back nearly a mile from the turnpike. Here the land was deserted,
cared for only by the ground crews who kept down the weeds. Laws had already
forced a safety zone around the plants, though it had been no great hardship
to National. Behind the plant, lay a great tract of barren land, stretching
back down a brackish little stream to a swamp further away. That, at least,
was useful, since it served as a dumping ground for their wastes. Even the
spur line from the main railroad was nearly two miles long.
Once it had been only a power plant, one of several built to feed electricity
to St. Louis, modeled on the first successful commercial plant constructed by
General Electric to use atomic power. But early in its life, two young
scientists named Link and Hokusai had discovered a whole new field of atomics
and had come here to try it out. It was known that atoms heavier than uranium-
such as plutonium and neptunium-could be made but generally grew increasingly
unstable with added weight. The two men had found, however, that if the
packing of new particles could be continued, eventually a new level could be
reached that was again fairly stable. Such atoms-super-heavies-had never
existed in nature, but many proved far more valuable than the natural forms.
National had grown to its present size on the development of the heavy
isotopes, and power was now only a sideline, though the plant supplied all of
Kimberly's power requirements.
Ferrel saw Emma stiffen as they neared the gate, but Dick had remembered and
was already braking. She had an almost pathological fear of going inside,
based on an unrealistic belief that her second child was stillborn because of
radiation here. Her worst nightmares centered around the plant. But Doc had
long since given up any attempt to reason with her, and she had learned to
accept his continuing employment there.
He got out, self-consciously shaking Dick's hand, and watched them hurriedly