"Chapter 19" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

C H A P T E R

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°-NO. WAIT STOP HIM!" MARY INTERRUPTED HERSELF AS
Squonk headed toward the entry port.
Jim did.
"So," he said, "Squonk's been promoted from an 'it,' has he? Probably high time. I've been getting him mixed up with other 'its' every time I try to talk about him and things. Just remember it was you who renamed him, not me."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Mary. "Now, bring him back here."
For Jim had imagined Squonk being signaled to halt and he (to give him his new pronoun) had obeyed by going stone still.
"Tell him to move the temperature control all the way down to zero," added Mary.
"What?"
"Just do it, Jim."
"All right." Jim obeyed. He directed Squonk to the ship's interior atmosphere controls on the console, then to the temperature control among them, and finally to moving the temperature control to zero degrees celsius.
"Now up to twenty-three degrees," ordered Mary. "Now, down to nine degrees."
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THE FOREVER MAN / 213
When the control knob brought the sharp point of the indicator back to nine on the scale, the whole area of the climate controls, which were mounted in the midst of the ship's controls vertically on the panel directly before the pilot's command position, fell outwards, showing themselves to be hinged at the bottom. Revealed was a dark recess, about half a meter square and of invisible depth.
"Very clever," commented Jim. "Turning a temperature control into the dial of a combination safe. Very clever indeed. Now what?"
"Now have Squonk reach in there and see if he finds anything."
Squonk, at Jim's orders, explored the aperture with the tip of one of his tentacles. It appeared from what Jim could see to be a recess about as deep as it was high or wide.
The tentacle came out holding nothing.
"Tell him too bad," said Mary, with satisfaction in her voice. "Apparently the key wasn't there."
Jim passed the message on.
"But do you mind telling me," he asked, "just exactly what's going on? Why all that trouble to set up a secret place and then have it empty?"
"It wasn't empty," said Mary, a -little smugly. "Now that tentacle of Squonk's been infiltrated by a microtransmitter that'll broadcast anything seen or heard in his vicinity back to the ship's recorder."
"What recorder?"
"The same one that's been recording every noise and action aboard this ship since we started."
"Our mind-to-mind conversations, too?"
"No," said Mary regretfully. "It couldn't pick up the mindtomind talking. It's only recorded when you speak out loud through the ship's internal and external communication system, the way you talked to Louis Mollen and me when we were back at Base and you were first in AndFriend. Now, when we get out in that city, I'm going to start making notes on what I observe. We can't transmit those back to the ship via Squonk's transmitter, so I'll dictate them to you and you do what you'd ordinarily do to repeat them out loud over AndFriend's internal communications system. Actually, you'll be repeating them out loud to the recorder."


214 I Gordon R. Dickson _