"Joe Haldeman - The Coming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Dr. Bell, 436. He turned to the right and the cameras followed. The small one stopped every couple
of meters to take atmosphere: bulletin boards, an empty classroom, the sign that said department of
astronomy and astrophysics. Dr. Bell was waiting for him in a doorway, a small stocky woman with short
black hair streaked with white; a kindly face with an expression difficult to read. Dan introduced himself
and they went into the office.
The guy sitting by the desk looked like the janitor, but Dan had a good memory for faces and made
the name connection. He held out his hand. "Norman Bell, of course. I went to your concert in the park
last spring."
The man shook his hand and looked amused. "You cover music as well as astronomical anomalies?"
"No, sir." Something about the man compelled honesty. "Actually, I'm tone-deaf. It was a date."
He laughed. "She must have been worth pursuing." He stood up. "Well. I'll get out of your way."
"Please stay, Norman." She looked at Dan. "Is that all right?"
He shrugged. "As long as you don't stand or sit together. Confuses the cameras' tiny brains." They
would scurry around getting two-shots, long shots, intercuts, reaction shots. Half the footage would be of
a scruffy-looking man in gray workclothes, temporarily irrelevant. "I think it would shoot best with you at
your desk, Professor. I'll sit over here." He indicated the chair that Norman had just vacated.
"I'll go lurk by the coffee machine. Want some?"
"No thanks. Just came from Burgerman."
"That's how you got here so fast," Dr. Bell said. "I hope it didn't interrupt your breakfast."
"Oh, no," he lied, "just hanging out with the city cops. Trade gossip." He looked at the big camera
and whistled, then spoke slowly: "Establishing shot. Bee Gee two-seventy from behind subject to my
left." The camera drifted behind Bell and then wheeled out in an arc. "That's for editing back in the studio.
I just repeat the questions there and they can paste my face in from any angle. So the cameras don't have
to worry about me now."
The camera completed its circuit and said "okay" in a monotone. "Begin at the beginning," Dan said.
"How much do you know?"
"Almost nothing. You got some weird signal from outer space and the night desk thought it was
important."
"It is." She leaned back. "I got to the office a little after four. The screen was blinking for attention."
"Can you recreate that?"
"Sure." She pushed a button on her desk. "Find today, 0405."
The screen began to blink red, saying ANOMALY RECORDED GRB-1 0355 EST.
Dan whistled and pointed at the screen. The large camera rolled up to it and seemed to concentrate.
"Daniel," it said in a soft woman's voice, "please come adjust my raster synchronization."
Dan shook his head. "That's automatic in the new models." He got up and peered through the
camera and fiddled with a pair of knobs until the picture of the wallscreen settled down.
 He returned to his seat and the small camera climbed up onto Bell's desk and stared at her. She
looked at it warily. "Am I supposed to talk to it?"
"No, just talk to me. What does the message mean?"
"GRB-1 is a gamma-ray burst detector. The 'one' is optimism; we never got money to launch the
second, which would've been a backup.
"Anyhow, some sources send out bursts of gamma rays, sometimes for hours, sometimes minutes,
usually just seconds. This satellite detects and analyzes the radiation. It has a small telescope, essentially a
fast wide-angle lens, that covers the whole sky every two seconds. If it detects a gamma-ray burst, the
bigger telescope can be on it in about a second."
"Does it have any practical applications?"
"One never knows, but I doubt it. Except that if the Sun ever did that, it would fry everyone on the
daytime side of the planet. It would be nice to have a few hours' warning."
"Do you have a picture of the satellite?"
"Sure." She pushed the button. "Find GRB hyphen one comma artist's conception." A dramatic holo