"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

perhaps within atoms, have been changed in some way in this knife.
I am convinced that the properties of living organisms, whose vital
functions are connected with the discharge of energy in the form of action
potentials, will provide the key to the riddle."
He went over to the round aquarium encircled by wire and launched into
a discourse, but Opratin soon interrupted him.
"I get the picture, Anatole," he said courteously but firmly. "You put
the fish between the plates of a capacitor in an oscillatory circuit and
look for a resonance in the bioelectrical frequency of the fish. I don't
think this avenue will lead you anywhere. You're right, though, about one
thing -that the inter-atomic bonds in the knife were altered. But how was
the energy of the intrinsic bonds of this substance overcome? If we only had
the knife now! By the way, you said it lay inside an iron box. You haven't
lost the box too, have you?"
Benedictov took a small iron bar from a drawer and held it out to
Opratin. It looked something like a pencil case.
Opratin sprang to his feet. "What the devil!" he exclaimed. "The same
letters!"
Engraved on the cover were the letters "A M D G". Below the letters a
crown had been engraved, and below that were "J d M" in smaller letters.
Opratin walked the length of the study and back again, his steps
ringing like the pounding of a hammer.
"What's the matter?" Benedictov asked, turning his head to follow
Opratin. "What's upset you?"
"Oh, nothing much. What do those letters stand for?"
"The upper four are the initial letters of a Jesuit motto but I don't
remember it. I don't know what the bottom ones stand for. It's unlikely they
have anything to do with our problem."
"Well, let's not lose time setting up our first experiment. When you
described your generator I got an idea. Was a crate of instruments delivered
to you today?"
"Yes. By the way, were you the one who sent that ape to this place
disguised as an electrician?"
"How could you ever think that? He's my laboratory technician.
Extremely useful, and not a bad fellow at all. But to get back to business.
I think we should begin with a minimum surface, with the point of a needle."
Opratin opened a case and took out a metal holder to which a long,
highly polished needle was attached. Then he briefly set forth the method of
the experiment.
The equipment lay on a small table, under a binocular magnifying glass.
The needle and the holder were placed in a screw-clamp with a micrometer
screw in such a way that the needle point was close to a steel cube. All
this was inserted in a coil between parallel plates and enclosed in a
thick-walled vessel. Wires connecting the apparatus with the electrostatic
machine and the oscillator ran through holes drilled in the glass.
"Now we'll see what your oscillator is capable of," Opratin remarked.
"Well, here we go. We'll try to make the electric field act on the intrinsic
bonds of the substance of this cube."
The disc of the electrostatic machine began to whirl, humming softly.
"Switch on the oscillator," Opratin commanded.