"Judith Merril - Whoever You Are" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

subject up. Sergeant Bolster knocked over the checker board reaching for the tape. He read it, paled
visibly, passed it across to the private, and started transmitting to the Post almost at the same instant.
On Phobos, a Signal Tech. depressed three levers on his switchboard before he stopped to wonder
what was wrong. Green alarm meant emergency calls to the O.D., Psychofficer, and P.R. Chief. The
Tech. sent out the summons, then stopped to read the tape.

DYTEKTR FYLD RYPORT: BB-3 EM RADASHNZ INDKAT ALYN LIF—RYPYT ALYN
LIF UBORD. RYPT: DYTEKTR FYLD RYPORT VIA SKANLITS 9-38-107 TU SKANLITR 6
SHOZ NO UMN LIF UBORD BB-3.
BOLSTER, SGT/SKNR 6

By the time the Phobos Post Commander got up from his dinner table, the Psychofficer put down the
kitten he was playing with, and the Public Relations Deputy pushed back the stool at her dressing table,
the crews of all five
Scanliters within range of the point of entry, as well as the Signals Tech. on Phobos, knew all the
pertinent details of what had occurred.
The Baby Byrd III, a five-man starscout, under command of Captain James Malcolm, due back after
almost a full year out of System, had approached a point of entry just outside the orbit of Saturn on the
electromagneto-gravitic Web of force that surrounded the Solar System. It had signalled the correct
radar recognition pattern, and replied to the challenge of the scanlite stations circling the point of entry
with the anticipated code responses. Accordingly, the point had been softened to permit entry of the ship,
and a standard detector set up around the soft spot.
Thus far, it was routine homecoming for a starscout. It was only when the BB-3 entered the detector
field that the automatics on the scanner-satellite stations began to shrill the alarms for human help. The
field registered no human electro-magnetic emanations on board the BB-3. The e-m pattern it got was
undoubtedly alive ... and just as undeniably alien.
For the third time in the history of the Web, an attempt at entry had been made by unauthorized
aliens; and those aliens were apparently in sole possession of a Solar starscout. The third attempt . . . and
the third failure: the BB-3 was already secured in a slightly intensified smaller sphere of the same e-m-g
mesh that made up the Web, suspended at midpoint between the three circling scanlite stations.

Eternal vigilance is most assuredly the price of the peace of the womb. The membrane of force that
guarded the System from intrusion had, in turn, to be guarded and maintained by the men who lived
within it. The scanner-satellites were as nearly infallible as a machine can be; they might have run
effectively for centuries on their own very slowly diminishing feedback-power systems. But man's security
was too precious a thing to trust entirely to the products of man's ingenuity. Each year a new group of the
System's youth was called to Service, and at the end of the year, a few were chosen from among the
volunteers to man the Scanliters that serviced the satellite stations which comprised the Web.
For even the most adventurous of youths, one further year of Scanliting was usually enough; they
came back from their fifty tours Outside prepared to keep their feet on solid ground, and to forget the
brief experience of facing the unknown. But each year, too, there were a few of them who learned to
crave the intoxication of danger, who could no longer be content to settle back into the warm security of
the System. It was these warped veterans of the Web who became Byrdmen.
Secure within the womb-enclosure of the Web, five billion Solar citizens could wreak their wills upon
their little worlds, and carry on the ever more complex design for nourishment of all the intra-System
castes and categories.
Outside, the emissaries of mankind streaked through the heavens on their chariots of fire, spreading
the Solar culture through galactic space, spawning the seeds of men between the stars. First went the
Baby Byrds, to scout new lands beyond the farthest outposts; then the Byrds, with their full complements
of scientists, and giant laboratories, to test the promise of the newly-charted planets; and after them, the