"Eric Frank Russell - With a Strange Device" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

Women, always the socially conscious sex, boosted this attitude to the utmost. Female workers and the
wives of male workers adopted in their outside relations a farmyard pecking-order based upon the
colour of the area in which they or their husbands worked. The wives of black-area workers were tops
and proud of it; those ofwhito -area men were bottom and riled by it. The sweet smile and cooing voice
and feline display of claws was the normal form of greeting among them.



Such a state of affairs was accepted by all and sundry as `just one of those things'. But it was not just
one of those things. It was direct evidence that the plant was occupied and operated by human beings
who were not robots made of case-hardened steel. The absent expert - a top-flight psychologist - could
have recognized this fact with half an eye even if he did not know a venturi-tube from a rocketnosecap .



That was where the real weakness lay. Not in concrete, granite, or steel, not in mechanisms or electronic
devices, not in routines or precautions or paperwork, but in flesh and blood.




Haperny'sresignation caused more irritation than alarm. Forty-two years old, dark-haired and running to
fat, he was a red-area expert specializing in high-vacuum phenomena. All who knew him regarded him as
clever, hard-working, conscientious and as emotional as a plaster statue. So far as was known, nothing
interested Haperny beyond his work, nothing stirred him outside of his work. The fact that he was a
bachelor was considered proof that he had nothing for which to live other than his work.



Bates, the head of his department, and Laidler, the chief security officer, summoned him for an interview.
They were sitting side by side behind a big desk when he lumbered in and blinked at them through thick-
lensedglasses. Bates dumped a sheet of paper on the desk and poked it forward.



`Mr Haperny, I've just had this passed to me.Your resignation. What's the idea?'



`I want to leave,' said Haperny, fidgeting.



`Why? Have you found a better post someplace else?If so, with whom? We are entitled to know.'



Haperny shuffled his feet and looked unhappy. `No, I haven't got another job. Haven't looked for one