"Arkadi and Boris Strugatski. Spontaneous Reflex (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Kostenko, are new here, so shut up..."
"I know," said Korolev. "Well do the following. I will call the dorms
and wake up our interns. Ryabkin, you run to the car park. Ah, damn,
everybody is probably out in a club. Well, go anyway and bring at least
three drivers. We need to take out our bulldozers. Am I right, Piskunov?"
"Yes-yes, and hurry up. Only..."
"Piskunov, you go to the lab. Find out where Utm is located and call
the car park immediately. Kostenko, go with him. Is that clear? Damn, I hope
it doesnt get outside the gates!"
They ran outside pushing and shoving and stepping on each others feet.
Ryabkin slipped and gave a head-butt into the back of Kostenko, who fell on
all fours.
"Damn! Damn it!"
"What, glasses?"
"No, everything is fine..."
Fierce wind was hurling clouds of dry snow above the ground, mournfully
whined in electrical cables, and droned heavily in the steel web of
high-voltage cable supports. Bleak yellow rectangles of light were seeping
from the cottage windows, and everything else was immersed in total
darkness.
"Well, I am off," said Ryabkin. "Be careful friends, don't risk your
lives for nothing."
He tripped again and for about a minute struggled in the snow-drift
swearing and cursing the vile blizzard, damned Utm, and everything having to
do with this incident in general. Finally his fair fur-coat could be seen by
the gate and disappeared in the gusts of the whirling snow.
Piskunov and Kostenko were left by themselves.
Kostenko shivered from cold.
"I don't get it," he said. "What do bulldozers have to do with
anything?"
"And what would you suggest?" Piskunov inquired.
"Well, I just don't get it... Do you want to destroy Utm?"
Piskunov uttered a short sigh, and continued, "Utm is a unique device,
the result of creative efforts of the entire Research Institute of
Experimental Cybernetics over the past several years. Do you understand? How
can I possibly wish it destroyed?"
He gathered the flaps of his fur coat and staggered on through the
snowdrift. Kostenko, mortified and humiliated, followed him. A snow-covered
field lay ahead of them and the road beyond it. The power station was on the
other side of the road.
To cut through, Piskunov turned off the road and set across the field,
which had a foundation pit for a new building dug out in it back in the
fall. Kostenko could hear Piskunov muttering something every time he
stumbled on the piles of iced over bricks and reinforcing bars. It was
difficult to walk. The sparse lights of the institute were barely visible
behind the cover of the blizzard.
"Wait," finally said Kostenko. "I say... This is so difficult. Let's
rest a while."
Piskunov squatted down beside him. What did happen? He knew Utm better
than anybody else in the institute. Every bolt, every electrode, every lens