"Frank Herbert - Operation Syndrome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Strangely, this disturbed sensation sometimes follows by minutes or even hours the period
when the patient was under examination.
"I am hesitant to suggest a theory based upon this latter phenomenon. There is too much
we do not know about the teleprobe -- its latency period, for instance. However, it is possible
that the combination of teleprobe and disturbed personality broadcasts a field with a
depressant effect upon the unconscious functions of persons within that field. Be that as it
may, this entire field of teleprobe and encephalographic wave research carries implications
which -- "
With a decisive gesture, Eric snapped off the projector, slipped out of bed and dressed.
The bedside clock showed 3:28 A.M., Saturday, May 15, 1999. Never in his life had he felt
more alert. He took the steps two at a time down to his basement lab, flipped on all the lights,
wheeled out his teleprobe.
I'm on to something, he thought. This Syndrome problem is too urgent for me to waste
time sleeping.
He stared at his teleprobe, an open framework of shelves, banks of tubes, maze of wiring,
relaxing chair in the center with the metal hemisphere of the pickup directly above the chair.
He thought, The musikron is rigged for sound projection; that means a secondary resonance
circuit of some kind.
He pulled an unused tape recorder from a rack at the end of his bench, stripped the
playback circuit from it. He took the recorder service manual, sketched in the changes he
would need, pausing occasionally to figure circuit loads and balances on a slide rule. Presently,
not too satisfied with his work, but anxious to get started, he brought out the parts he would
need and began cutting and soldering. In two hours he had what he wanted.
Eric took cutter pliers, went to the teleprobe, snipped away the recorder circuit, pulled it
out as a unit. He wheeled the teleprobe cage to the bench and, delicately feeling his way,
checking the circuit diagrams as he went, he wired in the playback circuit. From the monitor
and audio sides, he took the main leads, fed them back into the first bank of the
encephalographic pickup. He put a test power source on the completed circuit and began add
big resistance units by eye to balance the impedance. It took more than an hour of testing
and cutting, required several units of shielding.
He stepped back, stared at the machine. He thought, It's going to oscillate all over the
place. How does he balance this monster?
Eric pulled at his chin, thinking. Well, let's see what this hybrid does.
The wall clock above his bench showed 6:45 A.M. He took a deep breath, hooked an
overload fuse into a relay power switch, closed the switch. A wire in the pickup circuit blazed
to incandescence; the fuse kicked out. Eric opened the switch, picked up a test meter, and
returned to the machine. The fault eluded him. He went back to the circuit diagrams.
"Perhaps too much power -- " He recalled that his heavy duty rheostat was at a shop being
repaired, considered bringing out the auxiliary generator he had used on one experiment. The
generator was beneath a pile of boxes in a corner. He put the idea temporarily aside, turned
back to the teleprobe.
"If I could just get a look at that musikron."
He stared at the machine. "A resonance circuit -- What else?" He tried to imagine the
interrelationship of the components, fitting himself into the machine.
"I'm missing it some place! There's some other thing and I have the feeling I already know
it, that I've heard it. I've got to see the diagrams on that musikron."
He turned away, went out of the lab and climbed the stairs to his kitchen. He took a coffee
capsule from a package in the cupboard, put it beside the sink. The vidiphone chimed. It was
the clerk from the travel bureau. Eric took down her report, thanked her, broke the
connection. He did a series of subtractions.