"James Van Pelt - Perceptual Set" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

Perceptual Set
by James Van Pelt
The interpretation of indirect evidence may say as much about the observer as
about the observed.


Margo said, “If you really want to know how a man will treat you, watch how he
eats his cheesecake.”
Janet poked at her dessert. “That's ridiculous.” The second shift filled the
cafeteria. From their table near the wall, the narrow room curved up to the
other end as it followed the mining and processing ship's long arc, but
Janet's attention was on Crew Chief Alec Maier. She noted he'd chosen the
cheesecake too, but he ignored it as he listened to a pair of his miners
arguing about relief time and compensation for lost work. He never glanced her
way.
Janet put her fork down in disgust. “You can't make a decent cheesecake with
rehydrated dairy products. I should have had lunch in my quarters.”
“Did you get new scans on the Gargoyle?”
“Where did you get that name?” Janet whispered. “A Strieberist will hear you,
and I'll be fending off missionaries again.”
“Nut cases. If they had their way, we'd give up on the whole ark project and
wait for rescue instead.”
Janet remembered how the recruiters sold her on graphic presentations of the
ark ships heading for the stars, fleeing the mutagen-wracked Earth, packed
from end to end with everything necessary to colonize distant distant planets.
Without the asteroid-mining projects, the arks would never be built. They had
needed her cartography skills, and now she was the go-to person in the
department.
“Maybe, but they see alien fingerprints on everything. I don't care what the
company says about hiring diversity. They make my life miserable. You're not
supposed to know anything about it anyway. It's secret,” Janet said.
Margo dipped a piece of bread into her coffee cup, then popped it into her
mouth. “People talk to me. I'm the therapist.” Like most of the crew, she'd
long ago given up on the regulation work clothes, wearing instead a loose tee
shirt and shorts. Her hair was a close-cropped brown that matched her dark
eyes. She grinned while chewing. The only time Janet saw her with a serious
expression was when she studied psychiatric profiles. Then, her brow would
wrinkle and she'd push her fingers into her cheeks as if trying to squeeze
understanding out of herself. “So, is it an alien space station?”
Janet thought about not answering, but Margo's security clearance was higher
than hers, and if she really wanted to know, there'd be little Janet could do
to stop her. “No, but it's darned weird. The clearer the scan, the more it
looks like a head to me, just like the Ceres flyby recorded.” The first clear
photos showed a face on the asteroid. At first it seemed as if it was all
face, but later shots showed it was more like a cameo carved into a larger
surface. She'd enhanced the images, then turned in her report.
Margo snorted. “Head, my foot. It's your perceptual set. Giovanni Schiaparelli
thought he saw water channels on Mars in the 1800's. He was prepared to see
evidence of life, and he found it. It's like that head on Mars obsession at
the end of the twentieth century. Put three dots and a line on anything, and