"Harry Harrison - One Step From Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"It's simple enough." Otto relaxed, on familiar ground, eager to explain, forgetting their situation for the
moment. Which is just why Ben, who knew a good deal about MT theory, had asked him the question.

"The discovery of Bhattacharya space is what made matter transmission possible. Bhattacharya space
— or B-space — is analogous to our three-dimensional continuum but nevertheless lies outside of it. But
we can penetrate it. The interesting thing is that wherever we penetrate it, from whatever location in our
own universe, we appear to come through in the same place there. So by careful alignment it is possible
to have two screens sharing the same portion of B-space. The B-space in effect is allowed to penetrate
into our space before each screen so that as far as we are concerned the screens no longer exist in our
space-time continuum. Whatever enters one comes out of the other. That is it, simply, of course."
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"Simple enough — as long as you leave out the details about how the gadget is built. But it doesn't
explain why we can't leave Mars in the same manner that we came."

"There are a number of factors involved, but the more important ones are alignment power and physical
distance."

"You told me distance doesn't affect the screens."

"It doesn't, directly, but it makes alignment much more difficult. The screen out there that was rocketed
here to Mars has a two-foot working diameter, about the very largest we could send. Almost all of its
power goes to holding its existence. The transmitter on Earth reaches out and — it is difficult to describe
— latches onto it, holds it in shape, stabilizes it to receive transmission. But the same process won't
happen in reverse."

"What would happen if something were sent back in the other direction?"

"There is no 'other direction.' Anything put into this transmitter would be converted to Y radiation and
simply sprayed into Bhattacharya space."

"Doesn't sound healthy at all. What do you say we recharge our oxygen tanks and move the rest of the
stuff in here that we are going to need? Then get some sleep."

"I'm with you."

They gathered only the immediate essentials — food, air-scrubbing equipment, and the like — then
crawled into their sleeping bags. The next day they were both feeling much better and finished setting up
the camp. On the third day the first pieces of the big matter transmitter were sent through.

It was a component engineer's nightmare. All the units, whatever their function, had to have been
designed to fit through a two-foot hole. A number of compromises had been made. After a good many
sleepless nights over the drawing boards it had been finally decided that a diesel-electric generator could
not be modified enough to get it through Some nameless subengineer bestowed credit on his superiors by
suggesting that enough high-charge batteries could he sent through to activate the big six-foot screen long
enough to push the generator through in one piece.