"Murray Leinster - Four from Planet 05" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The inter-base radio suddenly announced that the French seismograph had recorded an earth-shock.
Within minutes, the British and Belgians confirmed it. The Danes chimed in. The coincidence of a
ground-shock with a static-burst-assuredly in time, and apparently in place-was proof that
something dramatic had happened.
Soanies elaborately went over the whole business in his mind again. For the first time in several
days he was able to keep his thoughts away from Gail. Any ideas about a relationship with her
simply were out. The point was that he wasn't rich and never would be. He couldn't afford a wife
and there was no use thinking about it. So he would think about whatever had happened down on the
ice-cap tonight. In the present state of international
jitters, God only knew what anything like this might bring about. So far, studies for weather-
control in bacteriology, physics, aerodynamics, cybernetics, even progress in miniaturization had
been denounced fiercely in the U.N. as preparation for war. But it had appeared that a study of
meteoric orbits ought to seem a harmless pastime even to the Russians.
When dawn came, he went out to the helicopter's hangar. There was a supply plane on the runway,
but the helicopter belonged at the base.. He checked it over. He was supposed to take Gail aloft
in it today. He found himself excessively careful in his check-over. He tried to assure himself
that he was over-conscientious merely because she was a girl, a visiting reporter, but he wasn't a
good liar.
When he headed back toward the main building one of the geophysics gang beckoned to him. He
~fo1lowed to the small, distant hut, now snow-buried to its eaves, in which the seismograph ticked
away. It was several hundred yards from anywhere that strong ground-vibrations could be expected.
"I think I'm going crazy," said the geophysics man. "Did you ever hear of a ground-shock starting
inside out?"
He pointed to the graph paper that fed very slowly past the seismograph's pens. The recording
looked odd.
"If you put your hand just under the surface of the water in a bathtub," said the puzzled
geophysics man, "and jerk it downward, you get a hollow that spreads out with a wave behind it.
It's the exact opposite of dropping a pebble into water, which makes a wave that spreads out with
a hollow, a trough, behind it. Except for that one way of making a backward wave system, all waves-
absolutely all wave-systems-start out with a crest and a trough behind it. Everywhere, all the
time, unless you do what I said in a bathtub."
"I'm a shower man myself," observed Soames. "But go
on.
"This," said the geophysics man bitterly, "is like a bathtub wave. See? The ground was jerked away
and then pushed back. Normal shock-waves push away and
then spring back! An ice-crack, a rock-slide, an explosion of any sort, all of them make the same
kind of waves! All have compression phases, then rarefaction phases, then compression pl~ases, and
so on. What"-his voice was plaintive-"what in hell is this?"
Soames nervously cleared his throat. He wondered if Gail could get a human-interest story out of a
geophysicist who found earth-shock waves placed hind part before.
"Are you saying," he asked after a moment, "that ordinary earth-tremors record like explosion-
waves, but that you'd have to have an implosion to make a record like this?"
"Sure!" said the geophysics man. "But how can you have an implosion that will make an earth-shock?
I'm going to have to take this whole damned wabble-bucket apart to find out what's the matter with


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it! But nothing can be the matter because it registered what it got! But what did it get?"