"Eric Frank Russell - Mindwarpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

minds had carefully considered what little was known about it, after which the
entire complex became less safe than a moth-eaten tent.
The outer wall stood forty feet high. It was eight feet thick, of granite blocks
sealed and faced with aluminous cement. Satin-smooth, there wasn't a toe-hold
on it, not even for a spider. Beneath the base of the wall, thirty-six feet down, ran
a sensitive microphone system, wired in duplicate, intended to thwart any human
moles who might try to burrow their way inside. Those who had designed the wall
had been firmly convinced that fanatics are capable of anything and that nothing
was too far-fetched to justify counter-measures.
In the great length of this quadrilateral wall were only two breaks, a narrow
one at the front for the entry and exit of personnel, a wider one at the back for
trucks bringing supplies or removing products. Both gaps were protected by three
forty-ton hardened steel doors, as massive as dock gates, mechanically operated
and incapable of standing open more than one at a time. Each door was
attended by its own squad of guards, big, tough, sour-faced men who in the
opinion of all those who had dealings with them had been specially chosen for
their mean, suspicious natures.
Exit was less difficult than entry. Invariably armed with a pass-out permit, the
departer merely suffered the delay of waiting for each door to close behind him
before the one in front could open. Movement in the opposite direction, inward,
was the real chore. If one were an employee well-known to the guards one could
get through subject to tedious waits at three successive doors plus a possible
check on whether one's pass-the pattern of which was changed at unpredictable
intervals-bore the current design.
But the stranger had it tough no matter how high his rank, important his
bearing or authoritative the documents he presented. He would certainly suffer a
long and penetrating inquisition at the hands of the first squad of guards. If his
questioners were not thoroughly satisfied-and most times they were satisfied with
nothing in heaven or on earth-the visitor was likely to be searched right down to
the skin. Any protest on his part usually resulted in the search being extended to
include close inspection of his physical apertures. Anything found that was
deemed suspicious, superfluous, unreasonable, inexplicable or not strictly
necessary for the declared purpose of the visit was confiscated on the spot and
returned to the owner when he took his departure.
And that was only the first stage of this bureaucratic purgatory. At the next
door the second squad of guards specialized in concocting objections to entry
not thought up by the first guards. Its members were not above belittling the
security consciousness and search proficiency of the first guards and insisting
upon a second "more expert" search. This could and sometimes did include
removal of the dental plates and careful examination of the naked mouth, a tactic
inspired by the known development of a camera the size of a cigarette's filter-tip.
Guard squad number three had the worst skeptics of the lot. Its members
had an infuriating habit of detaining twice-passed incomers while they checked
with squads one and two was to whether this, that or the other question had been
asked and, if so, what replies had been given. They had a tendency to doubt the
truth of some replies, throw scorn upon the plausibility of others and seek
contradictions over which they could foam at the mouth. Full details of searches
were often demanded by them and any omission in search-technique was made
good then and there even if the victim had to strip himself stark naked for the
third time in thirty minutes. Guard squad number three also possessed but