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

of stars, and the other was two-thirds glass partition behind which more young men could be seen working at equipment in an
inner room.
"The opening ceremony will be in here," said Reinharts.
"Where does the Minister break the champagne bottle, or cut the ribbon, or whatever he does?"
"At the desk. He presses a button on the control desk to start it."
"It isn't working yet?"
"Not yet. We're running acceptance tests."


2
 Judy stood by the doorway taking it in. She was the sort of good-looking young woman who is more often called handsome
than pretty, with a fresh complexion and alert, intelligent face and a very positive, slightly ungainly, way of standing. She might
have been a nurse, or an officer in the Services, or simply the product of a good hockey-playing school. She had rather large
hands and deep blue eyes. Under one arm she held a bundle of papers and pamphlets, which she pulled out and looked at, as if
they might explain what she saw.
"It's the biggest radio-telescope, well-anywhere." The Professor smiled happily round the room. "It's not as big as an
interferometer, of course, but you can steer it. You can shift your focus by the small reflector up top, and by that means you can
track a source across the sky."
"I gathered from these," Judy tapped her papers, "that there are other radio-telescopes operating in the same way."
"There are. There were in nineteen-sixty, when we started this-and that's several years ago. But they haven't our sensitivity."
"Because this is bigger?"
"Not entirely. Also because we've better receiving equipment. That should give us a higher signal-to-noise ratio. It's all
housed in there."
He pointed a small, delicate finger to the room behind the glass panel.
"You see, all you pick up from most astronomical sources-radio stars for instance-is a very faint electrical signal, and it's
mixed up with all kinds of noise, from the atmosphere, from interstellar gas, from heaven knows what-well, heaven indeed."
He spoke in a precise, matter-of-fact tenor voice; he might have been a doctor discussing a cold. The sense of achievement,
of imagination, was all hidden.
"You can hear sources other people can't?" asked Judy.
"Hope to. That's the idea. But don't ask me how.
There's a team evolved it." He looked modestly down at his little feet. "Doctors Fleming and Bridger."
"Bridger?" Judy looked up sharply.
"Fleming's the real brains, John Fleming." He called politely across the room. "John!"
One of the young men detached himself from the group at the control desk and wandered towards them.
He said, "Hi!" to the Professor and ignored Judy.
"If you have a moment, John, Dr. Fleming. Miss Adamson."
The young man glanced at Judy, then called across to the control desk.
"Turn that flaming noise down!"
"What is it?" Judy asked. The atmospherics reduced themselves to a faint hissing. The young man shrugged.
"Interstellar hiss, mainly. The universe is full of electrically charged matter. What we pick up is an electrical emission from
these charges, which we get as noise."
"The background music of the universe," Reinhart added.
"You can keep that. Prof.," said the young man, with a sort of friendly contempt. "Keep it for Jacko's press handouts."
"Jacko's not coming back."
Fleming looked faintly surprised, and Judy frowned as if she had mislaid some piece of information.
"Who?" she asked the Professor.
"Jackson, your predecessor." He turned to Fleming.
"Miss Adamson's our new press officer."
Fleming regarded her without relish. "Well, they come and go, don't they? Inheriting Jacko's spheres?"
"What are they?"