"Murray Leinster - The Boomerang Circuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

"But," said Kim blankly. "Why shouldn't they come through?"
"The matter-transmitter's stopped working!" The Colony Organizer wrung his hands. "If they're still
transmitting on Ades, think of the lives and the precious material that's being lost!"
"They aren't transmitting," said Kim. "A transmitter and a receiver are a unit. Both have to work for
either one to operate—except in the very special case of a transmitter-drive ship. But it's queer. I'll come
take a look."
He slipped into the conventional out-of-door garments. Dona had listened. Now she said a word or
two to Kim, her expression concerned. Kim's expression darkened.
"That's what I'm afraid of," he told her. "A transmitter is too simple to break down. They can get
detuned, but we made the pair for Ades and Terranova especially. Their tuning elements are set in solid
plastite. They couldn't get out of tune!"
He picked up a small box. He tucked it under his arm.
“I’ll be back," he told Dona heavily. "But I suspect you'd better pack."
He went out to the grounded flier. Then Colony Organizer took it up and across the green-clad hills
of Terranova. The vegetation of Terranova is extraordinarily flexible, and the green stuff below the flier
swayed elaborately in the wind. The top of the forests bowed and bent in the form of billows and waves.
The effect was that of an ocean; which complacently remained upraised in; hillocks and had no normal
surface. It was not easy to get used to such things.
"I'm terribly worried," said the Organizer anxiously. "There is a tremendous shortages of textiles, and
the ores we usually send back to balance our account are piling up."
"You're badly worried, eh?" said Kim, grimly.
"Of course! How can we keep our economic system now?"
Kim made an angry noise.
"I'm a lot more worried than you are," he snapped. "Nothing should have stopped this particular pair
of transmitters from working but the destruction of one or the other! This box in my pocket might tell me
the answer, but I'm afraid to find out. I assure you that temporary surpluses and shortages of ores and
textiles are the least of the things wee have to worry about."
The little flier sped on, with the great, waving billows of the forest beneath it. On one hillock there
was a clearing with a group of four plastic houses shining in the sunlight. They looked horribly lonely in
the sea of green, but the population on Terranova was spread thin. Far over at the horizon there was
another clearing. Sunlight glinted on water. A pleasure-pool. There was a sizable village about it. Half a
dozen soarers spun and whirled lazily above. Kim said:
"The thing is that Ades and the planets left over after we handled Sinab are the only places in the
whole First Galaxy where there are no disciplinary circuits. Ades is the only place where a man can spit
in the eye of another man and the two of them settle it between themselves. There's a government of
sorts, on Ades, as there is here, but there's no ruler. Also there's nobody who can strut around and make
other men bow to him. A woman on Ades, and here, belongs to the man she wants to belong to. She
can't be seized by some lordling for his own pleasure, and turned over to his guards and underlings when
he's through with her."
'That's true," said the Colony Organizer, who was still worried. "But the transmitter—"
"Gossip of the admirable state of things on Ades has gone about," said Kim hardly. "Some of our
young men appointed themselves missionaries and went roaming around the planets, spreading word that
Ades wasn't a bad place. That if you were exiled to Ades you were lucky. They probably bragged that
we whipped the Empire of Sinab in a fight."

AT THIS the mouth of the Organizer dropped open in astonishment. "Of course, of course! The
number of exiles arriving at Ades increased. It was excellent. We need people for the Second Galaxy,
and people who earn exile are usually people with courage, willing to take risks for the sake of hope.”
"Don't you realize that such things have been dangerous? When people on Markab Two began to
hope?" Kim said impatiently. “When peasants on the planets of Allioth began to imagine that things might