"David Langford - Cube Root" - читать интересную книгу автора (Langford David)

_The adjustment of Captain Mackin is particularly_
It happened then.
An appalling light flared high over the tor, like a giant flashbulb
which instead of flashing and dying went on and on in an optical crescendo. At
peak its dazzle washed out the colours of people and things with too much
light, as moonlight bleaches them with too little. It died away in yellows and
reds and a pulse of heat like dragon's breath; last of all came the slap of an
invisible shockwave that lashed the grass and pummelled the breath from the
lungs.
CLOSE EYES AND KEEP THEM CLOSED. FALL FLAT, FACE DOWN with HANDS TUCKED
UNDER BODY. STAY DOWN UNTIL THE SOUND OF THE EXPLOSION PASSES. They all had it
written in a little booklet.
Faulkner picked himself shakily from where reflex had flung him, in the
mud. Through lurid afterimages he saw other men doing the same. His ears rang
with a thunderous silence, his eyes with a solid purple lightning-sheet. The
interestingly adjusted Lewdown was first to speak, leaning again over Finlay
as the latter wiped his comm unit.
"Report _that_," he said.
"I'll have to start again," the Private/Tech said mechanically. He
peered at the LCD screen, and Faulkner heard a sharp intake of breath.
"Corrupted," came a voice that sounded hypnotized. "Radiation..."
The screen was filled with garbage, random letters and symbols,
alphabets of madness.
Finlay, Lewdown, Faulkner, and one by one the others, stared through
the fading light and dazzling afterimages at the plastic band about each right




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wrist. But of course it was too soon to tell.
****
A disaster's stark outlines can be blurred by soft layers of official forms.
Mackin demanded a roll-call almost before anyone's vision had cleared, and
within minutes Gray was scratching his cropped head over the "Observers
Initial Report Form" which was thoughtfully provided with Cube Root supplies.
"Date...unit position...approximate time of event. It's 1748 now, sir."
"Put 1740," said Mackin, staring into the void air over the unchanging
tor.
"Strike serial number (if known). Azimuth, umm..."
("It was N," Davies was saying not quite out of earshot, with the
tireless dull persistence of a pub bore. "I've been on the nuke course and I
know what I'm talking about. N, that's what, and you know what that means."
("I dunno," said Tregennis. "I never cottoned onto that stuff really.")
"Air or ground burst, sir?"
"Air, of _course_," said Mackin overloudly. "Air burst, altitude approx
200 metres, line-of-sight distance approx 700 metres, and you'll bloody well
have to _wait_ to fill in the question after _that_."
Gray scribbled in silence, chewing from time to time on the end of his
ballpen. "Personal N monitor records: oh. Oh yes." He flicked a look at his