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

"Dear young lady, you'll soon find out."



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 "I'm showing her the layout for Thursday," the Professor said. "The official opening. She'll be looking after the press."
Fleming had a dark, thoughtful face, which was less surly than preoccupied; but he seemed tired and bitter. He grumbled
away in a thick Midland accent.
"Oh yes-the Official Opening! All the coloured lights will be working. The stars will sing 'Rule Britannia" in heavenly
chorus, and I'll be round at the nub."
"You'll be here, John, I hope." The Professor sounded slightly irritated. "Meanwhile, perhaps you'd show Miss Adamson
round."
"Not if you're busy," said Judy in a small, hostile voice. Fleming looked at her with interest for the first time.
"How much do you know about it?"
"Very little yet." She tapped her papers. "I'm relying on these."
Fleming turned wearily to the room and spread an arm wide.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, is the largest and newest radio-telescope in the world-not to say the most expensive. It has a
resolution of fifteen to twenty times greater than any existing equipment and is, of course, a miracle of British science. Not to
say engineering. The pick-up elements"-he pointed out of the window-"are steerable so as to be capable of tracking the course of
a celestial body across the heavens. Now you can tell them everything, can't you?"
"Thank you," said Judy icily. She looked at the Professor, but he seemed only a little embarrassed.
"I'm sorry we worried you, John," he said.
"Don't mention it. It's a pleasure. Any time."
The Professor turned his kindly general-practitioner's attention to Judy.
"I'll show you myself."
"You do want it operating by Thursday, don't you?" said Fleming. "For His Ministership."
"Yes, John. It'll be all right?"
"It'll look all right. The brass won't know if it's working. Nor the news touts."
"I should like it to be working."
"Yeh."
Fleming turned away and walked back to the control desk. Judy waited for an explosion, or at least some sign of affront,
from the Professor, but he only nodded his head as if over a diagnosis.
"You can't push a boy like John. You may wait months for an idea. Years. It's worth it if it's a good one, and it generally is
with him." He looked wistfully at Fleming's receding back: sloppy, casual, with untidy hair and clothes. "We depend on the
young, you know. He's done all the low-temperature design, he and Bridger. The receivers are based on low-temperature
equipment and that's not my subject. There's a hand-out on it somewhere." He nodded vaguely at her bundle of papers. "We've
run him a bit ragged, I'm afraid."
He sighed, and took her off on a conducted tour of the building. He showed her the wall photographs of the night sky, telling
her the names and identity of the great radio stars, the main sources of the sounds we hear from the universe. "This," he
explained, pointing to the photographs, "is not a star at all, but two whole galaxies colliding; and this, a star exploding."
"And this?"
"The Great Nebula in Andromeda. M.31 we call it, just to confuse it with the motorway."
"It's in the Andromeda constellation?"
"No. It's way, way out beyond that. It's a whole galaxy in itself. Nothing's simple, is it?"
She looked at the white spiral of stars and agreed, "You get a signal from it?"
"A hiss. Like you heard."
Near the wall was a large perspex sphere with a small dark ball at its centre and other white ones set around it like the
electrons in a physicist's model of the atom.