"Murray Leinster - Med Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

city had heard since its people went away.
The stillness bothered Murgatroyd. He said, "Chee!" in a subdued tone and stayed
close to Calhoun. Calhoun shook his head. Then he said abruptly:
"Come along, Murgatroyd!"
He went back to the grid and the building housing its controls. He didn't look at the
space-port log this time. He went to the instruments recording the second function of a
landing-grid. In addition to lifting up and letting down ships of space, a landing-grid drew
down power from the ions of the upper atmosphere, and broadcast it. It provided all the
energy that humans on a world could need. It was solar power, in a way, absorbed and
stored by a layer of ions miles high, which then could be drawn on and distributed by the
grid. During his descent Calhoun had noted that broadcast power was still available. Now
he looked at what the instruments said.
The needle on the dial showing power-drain moved slowly back and forth. It was a
rhythmic movement, going from maximum to minimum power-use, and then back again.
Approximately six million kilowatts was being taken out of the broadcast every two
seconds for half of one second. Then the drain cut off for a second and a half, and went
on again—for half a second.
Frowning, Calhoun raised his eyes to a very fine color photograph on the wall above
the power dials. It was a picture of the human-occupied part of Maya, taken four
thousand miles out in space. It had been enlarged to four feet by six, and Maya City could
be seen as an irregular group of squares and triangles measuring a little more than half an
inch by three-quarters. The detail was perfect. It was possible to see perfectly straight,
infinitely thin lines moving out from the city. They were multiple-lane highways,
mathematically straight from one city to another, and then mathematically straight—even
though at a new angle—until the next. Calhoun stared thoughtfully at them.
"The people left the city in a hurry," he told Murgatroyd, "and there was little
confusion, if any. So they knew in advance that they might have to go, and were ready for
it. If they took anything, they had it ready-packed in their cars. But they hadn't been sure
they'd have to go because they were going about their businesses as usual. All the shops
were open and people were eating in restaurants, and so on."
Murgatroyd said, "Chee!" as if in full agreement.
"Now," demanded Calhoun, "where did they go? The question's really that of where
they could go! There were about eight hundred thousand people in this city. There'd be
cars for everyone, of course, and two hundred thousand cars would take everybody. But
that's a lot of ground-cars! Put 'em two hundred feet apart on a highway, and that's
twenty-six cars to the mile on each lane . . . Run them at a hundred miles an hour on a
twelve-lane road—using all lanes one way—and that's twenty-six hundred cars per lane
per hour, and that's thirty-one thousand . . . Two highways make sixty-two . . . Three
highways . . . With two highways they could empty the city in under three hours, and
with three highways close to two . . . Since there's no sign of panic, that's what they must
have done. Must have worked it out in advance, too. Maybe they'd done it before. . . ."
He searched the photograph which was so much more detailed than a map. There
were mountains to the north of Maya City, but only one highway led north. There were
more mountains to the west. One highway went into them, but not through. To the south
there was sea, which curved around some three hundred miles from Maya City and made
the human colony on Maya into a peninsula. It was a small fraction of the planet, but
grains wouldn't grow there. The planet could grow native plants for raw material for
organic chemicals, but it couldn't grow all its own food so its population was limited.
"They went east," said Calhoun presently. He traced lines with his finger. "Three
highways go east. There's the only way they could go, quickly. They hadn't been sure