"Fred Hoyle & John Elliot - A For Andromeda" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoyle Fred)

ACCELERATION 88
ACHIEVEMENTS 100
ANTIDOTE 110
ANNIHILATION




1
 ONE

ARRIVAL

LIGHT was soaking out of the sky when they drove up to Bouldershaw Fell. Judy sat beside the Professor in the back of the
staff car as it slid up the road from Bouldershaw town to the open moor: she peered hopefully out of the windows, but they were
nearly at the crest of the hill before they could see the radio-telescope.
Suddenly it stood in front of them: three huge pillars curving together at the top to form a triangular arch, dark and stark
against the ebbing sky. Hollowed out of the ground between the uprights lay a concrete bowl the size of a sports arena, and
above, suspended from the top of the arch, a smaller metal bowl looked downwards and pointed a long antenna at the ground.
The size of the whole thing did not strike the eye at first; it simply looked out of proportion to the landscape. Only when the car
had drawn up and parked beneath it did Judy begin to realize how big it was. It was quite unlike anything else she had seen-as
completely and intensely itself as a piece of sculpture.
Yet, for all its strangeness, there was nothing particularly sinister about the tall, looming structure to warn them of the
extraordinary and disastrous future that was to emerge from it.
Out of the car, they stood for a moment with the soft, sweet air filling their heads and lungs, and gazed up at the three huge
pylons, at the metal reflector that glistened high above them, and at the pale sky beyond. Around them a few low buildings and
smaller arrays of aerials were scattered about on the empty moor-top, enclosed by a wire-link fence. There was no sound but the
wind in the pylons and the curlews calling, and they could almost feel the great concrete-and-metal ear beside them straining to
listen to the stars.
Then the Professor led the way to the main building-a low stone-faced affair with a half-finished entrance and a newly-laid
approach. Men were putting in gateposts and direction notices and painting them: it all looked very new and sharp against the
soft, dark hilltop.
"There's all sorts of subsidiary gubbins," said the Professor, with a small delicate wave of his hand. "This houses the main
control room."
He was a man in his sixties, small, neat and cosy, like a family doctor.
"It's quite a baby," said Judy.
"Baby? It's the biggest baby I've ever given birth to. A ten years' labour."
He twinkled at her and his small black shoes pattered up the steps into the control building.
The entrance hall had an unfinished but at the same time familiar look: inevitable pegboard ceiling, inevitable composition
floor, plain colour-washed brick walls and fluorescent lighting. There was a wall telephone and a drinking fountain; there were
two small doors in the side wall, and there were double-doors facing the entrance; and that was about all. A faint hissing noise
came from behind the double doors. When the Professor opened them the hissing became louder. It sounded like atmospherics
from a radio.
As they went through the double doors a man in a cleaner's brown coat came out. His eye met Judy's for a moment, but when
she parted her lips he looked away.
"Good-evening, Harries," said the Professor.
The room they entered was the control room, the centre of the observatory. At the far end an observation window gave a
view of the gigantic sculpture outside, and facing the window was a massive metal desk, like an organ console, fitted with panels
of buttons, lights and switches. Several young men were working at the desk, referring from time to time to the two computers,
which stood in tall metal cases on each side of it. One side wall was covered with enlargements of optical-telescope photographs