The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  This morning, an army self-propelled drilling rig drove onto the freeway and drilled a row of six-foot-each boreholes at the barricade. Both sections of the barricade removed entirely.

  The Sheriff, Spring Corners police chief and federal prosecutors are trying to arrest Oscar B. Neld, the owner of a farm adjacent to the freeway. However, Mr. Neld's house and buildings are equipped with Blind Wall blocks controlled from the inside.

  Boston, February 1, 1978. Dr. R. Milton Schummer, a professor of sociology at Wellsford College and a stern critic of our society, told reporters tonight that some of the features of the Blind Wall blocks promise glimmers of hope in a long struggle between the individual and the state. Nevertheless, Dr. Schummer does not believe that "... a simple technical innovation can influence powerful trends in social development."

  Spring Corners Iowa, February 2, 1978. A four-foot-high barbed-wire fence wrapped around criss-cross rail rails blocks the State Highway near Leroy Weaver's farm, whose holdings have recently been cut by a freeway.

  It is impossible to get comments from Mr. Weaver, since his house and ancillary buildings are equipped with Blind Wall blocks, and neither the sheriff nor federal officials can penetrate his possessions.

  Washington, DC, February 3, 1978. Bureau of Standards. Tests of the Blind Wall blocks showed that they are, in fact, “stasis devices”. In other words, they prevent the change of any material surface to which they are attached. The substance under their influence becomes practically incompressible.

  Representatives of the Bureau of Standards have proposed many uses for this device. In particular, thin slices of apples and pears, placed in the field of the Deaf Wall device, have not undergone the slightest changes in three weeks.

  Spring Corners Iowa, February 4, 1978. The Army Self-Propelled Drilling Rig once again removed the obstruction blocking the State Highway. But the huge installation is now itself devoid of mobility, apparently with one or more hidden stasis devices (Blind Wall blocks).

  Since the drilling rig weighs more than thirty tons, and all the wheels of the tractor and trailer are locked, putting it in motion presents a significant problem.

  Los Angeles, February 5, 1978. Local police report the seizure after a forty-hour struggle of a brothel of drug addicts and other dubious personalities.

  The brothel, known as the "Club of the Misty Blues", was equipped with sixteen stasis devices produced by the Deaf Wall Incorporated. The police managed to get there only after disconnecting the entire district of the city from the mains.

  New York, February 5, 1978. Myron L. Sams, president of Deaf Wall Incorporated, today announced a reduction in prices for all types of company products.

  Now the room model of the blank wall will be sold at 229 dollars 95 cents instead of 289 dollars 95 cents. Special small stasis blocks, suitable for reinforcing fences, stiffening walls and ensuring the safety of housing, will be sold at retail for only 19 dollars 95 cents. Rumor has it that this price with improved production methods will bring significant profits to all interested parties. Therefore, a further decline in prices is very likely.

  Spring Corners Iowa, February 6, 1978. A flying crane removed a fixed rig from the State Highway today.

  Fourteen stasis blocks have so far been removed from the tractor and trailer.

  Seaton Bridge Iowa, February 9, 1978. The state's main freeway is again blocked, this time by a wall of cow manure eighty-three feet long, four feet wide at the base and two and a half feet high, probably stabilized by hidden stasis blocks. National Guard units patrol the Siton Bridge section of the road on both sides of the barrier.

  New York, February 10, 1978. According to representatives of the Deaf Wall Incorporated, the study of stasis devices taken from a drilling rig in Spring Center, pc. Iowa, revealed that this is “not the devices manufactured by the ICG, but rude, cheap, illegal fakes. Nevertheless, they work. ”

  Spring Center Iowa, February 12, 1978. The state's main freeway is blocked in three places by snow walls during yesterday's blizzard. Reporters who have visited the site report that the huge hills look like snowy, but solid, like concrete. Pickaxes and shovels leave no trace on them, and the attempt to melt the snow with flamethrowers was unsuccessful.

  New York, February 15, 1978. Dr. J. Paul Hughes, director of Deaf Wall Incorporated, has again called on the government to ban stasis devices. He recalled the warning of his grandfather, the inventor Everett Hughes, and announced his intention to spend the rest of his life trying to compensate for the harm caused by this device.

  New York, February 16, 1978. Myron L. Sams, president of Deaf Wall Incorporated, said today that the Drosophila fly had been in stasis for twenty-one days without apparent harm. GSI research scientists, he said, are now working on the problem of keeping small animals in stasis. If successful, Sams said, these experiments could open the door to a “one-way time travel” and give people with serious illnesses the opportunity to wait until the discovery of appropriate treatments.

  Des Moines, February 21, 1978. The Iowa government, after an unsuccessful siege of four farms near the Main Freeway, announced a new hearing on compensation to land owners building the freeway.

  Staunton Vermont, February 23, 1978. Hyrum Smith, a retired high school teacher, received orders last fall to leave the family home where his family had settled before the revolution. A dam should be built nearby, and Mr. Smith's house will be in flooded territory.

  This morning, while trying to execute the eviction order, the sheriff was stopped by a warning shot from Smith's house. After a shot from the house, a small battery-powered model appeared, apparently controlled by the radio, which sank near an old apple orchard about two thousand yards from the house.

  Mr. Smith shouted to the sheriff to get out of the car, if it was not equipped with a stasis device, and lay down, and in no case looked towards the garden.

  A blinding flash followed by a sharp jolt and thunder. The sheriff glanced at the garden, which was dimly lit by a pink glow and shrouded in swirling clouds, consisting, apparently, of turning into vapor of snow.

  Mr. Smith shouted that the sheriff should be removed from his land, otherwise the next "Morgunch bomb" would be sent to him.

  New York, February 25, 1978. Mr. Myron L. Sams, president of the Deaf Wall Incorporated, said today that “the Staunton bombing is in no way connected with the stasis block. "The stasis block is exclusively a defense device and cannot be used for offensive purposes."

  New York, February 27, 1978. Dr. J. Paul Hughes said tonight that the "Mortuary bomb" that exploded in Staunton yesterday and, as it now became known, formed a radioactive crater, "was probably connected to the stasis block." The unit was apparently installed on a light metal container containing a small amount of radioactive material. If the stasis unit is activated by a radio signal or a time relay, the high-energy particles emitted by the radioactive substance cannot exit the container. When the concentration of high-energy particles in a closed stasis field reaches its maximum, the radioactive substance - regardless of its quantity - reaches a critical state. Then the field turns off and an explosion follows.

  Montpelier Vermont, February 28, 1978. The state governor announced today the suspension of construction of the Staunton Dam during the consideration of numerous complaints by landowners.

  Spring Corners Iowa, May 16, 1978. It is reported that traffic has been restored along the State Highway along its entire length. Tunnels were built under the road so that farmers can move from one side to the other.

  Staunton Vermont, July 4, 1978. The Governor and Legislative Commission announced the abandonment of the large Staunton Dam project and the decision to build instead a series of small dams according to a plan that had previously been abandoned.

  Washington, September 30, 1978. The Ministry of Finance this morning allocated a special “team” of about one hundred and eighty people. Their task is to forcefully penetrate the growing Anti-Analog League, which, as they say, now has about one million fana
tic businessmen, growing by leaps and bounds. League members make the work of officials of the Ministry of Finance extremely difficult by blocking books and file cabinets with stasis devices, locking themselves into bailiffs in their stasis buildings, using stasis-equipped cars that leave stasis-protected garages connected to the aforementioned buildings and drive in houses equipped with stasis, and there the bailiffs physically cannot even step on the infield.

  Princeton New Jersey, October 5, 1978. It is reported that at a conference of leading scientists who gathered here today to exchange views on the nature of the stasis block, violent disagreements arose. One of the reasons for the disagreement is that the stasis block allows ordinary light to penetrate transparent bodies, but prevents the spread of some other types of electromagnetic radiation.

  Boston, September 2, 1979. Dr. R. Milton Schummer, a professor of sociology at Wellsford College, spoke out last night against “galloping individualism” in front of an audience of six hundred people in Sworthon Hall.

  Professor Schummer said that America, once a country of united efforts, is now a seething hotbed of rampant individualists, rebels, who grew rich, like by leaps and bounds, masters of stasis, all kinds of minutiars, who carried the country farther and farther away from their former state.

  This country, said Dr. Schummer, now needs a coherence of aspirations, a unity of purpose and the resolution of differences. But, he finished, the opposition is too strong. The direction of social development, like the direction of the sea tide, cannot be reversed by human efforts. It remains only to cringe at the thought of what the near future can bring.

  Bob show

  Meeting at prile

  Translation from English N. Kolpakova

  Kendar waited several thousand years before he saw the second spaceship. At the first, he was brought and left on this planet, where there were not even signs of food, where two red-hot suns seventeen months a year continuously pour out streams of light, so that the rocks melt and spread out by black rivers . If it were not for Kendar's ability to change his body, he would have long since died of hunger, thirst and heat. In fact, he was already almost dead, and he had nothing left to do but wait.

  And he was waiting.

  “I bet ten stellers,” Sargnor remarked to his partner Voysey, “that we will see a ship from the top of this hill.”

  - What already ?!

  Voysey fidgeted uneasily in his chair and began to twist the verniers at the location installation.

  “Wow, already!” Thought Sargnor. It seemed to him that a hundred years had passed since the womb ship threw six of its filming modules at the south pole of this black planet, and then soared back into the sky so that, having made a half-turn, it would descend to the north.

  It took the ship about half an hour to complete the maneuver, and the people in the modules had to sweat under triple overload for twelve days while their cars plowed the surface of the planet.

  The car reached the top of the hill; the horizon - the line separating the starry gloom from the dead gloom of the planet - moved away, and Sargnor saw, at five miles away, the sparkling lights cast by Sarafand onto the plain.

  “And you, Dave, were right,” said Voysey (Sardzhnor grinned, noting a note of respect in his voice). “Presumably, we will be the first to return to the ship.” Something I do not see the lights of other ships.

  Sargnor nodded. Strictly speaking, all six modules were supposed to be at the same distance from the uterine ship, forming an ideal circle. And so it was on most of the way where the devices strictly kept the shooting schedule, so that the data transmitted by them to the uterus always came from six equally distant points. Any deviation from the graph could lead to distortions on the map of the planet, drawn up on the board of a ship's computer. The radius of coverage of each film module was five hundred miles. And when half of this distance remained before the uterus, the work could be considered finished. It has long been an unwritten tradition on the last miles to arrange something like a race - with champagne for the winner.

  Module Five, the Sargnor apparatus, had just crossed a low but steep ridge of hills, and Sargnor believed that at least two more modules would have to lose time to overcome this obstacle. Well, it would be great to end up serving in the cartographic office by winning champagne.

  The voice of captain Eumuk, aboard the uterus ship, thundered from the speaker.

  - Says "Sarafand." All modules of geodetic survey to stop. Turn off the motors and do not move until further notice. That's an order!

  Before Evmuk's voice froze, the radio silence exploded: the modules, as if scared, spoke at once, and angry exclamations rained down from the loudspeaker.

  Module Five, as if nothing had happened, continued to move forward in the gloom.

  “Apparently, some kind of mistake came out,” said Sargnor, “but you, Voysey, better slow down the car and turn off the engines.”

  - What for? This Evmuk just got nuts! What else trouble could happen there? ..

  Without warning, the ultra-laser flash from the Sarafanda split the night into sparkling shards, and the hillside in front of the fifth module rose to the sky. Voysey sharply pressed the brakes, and the car, slipping a little, stopped at the sparkling edge of the trench left by the ultlaser. A fragment of stone falling from above rattled fractionally and deafeningly, rolling down the roof, then there was dead silence.

  - Says "Sarafand"! - again thundered in the reproducer. - I repeat: no filming module should make attempts to approach the ship. Everyone who breaks the order, I will be forced to destroy!

  Sargnor pressed a button on the radio transmitter.

  - Hello, Evmuk. Says Sargnor, Module Five. Captain, maybe you better tell us what's the matter ...

  There was a short pause, then Eumuk spoke again:

  - Six modules went to cartographic survey of the planet, and now there are seven of them. It is hardly necessary to add that one is superfluous.

  Anxiety, like a spasm, passed through Kendar's body. He suddenly realized that he had made a mistake. He was not afraid at all because the aliens discovered him ahead of time, or because they had more powerful weapons than he did.

  His mistake was different: he gave the opportunity to the car, whose appearance was copied, to get close to the spacecraft to be noticed from the board.

  Kendar's anxiety subsided as he caught the waves of fear and confusion from people in the cars. Creatures with a similar psyche never caused him serious difficulties. He stopped, like them, sending a ray of light ahead and from time to time emitting a series of radio waves: at the same frequency as the aliens modulated by their speech script.

  That's why he was Kendar, the smartest, most capable and most lonely creature in the universe. All he had to do now was wait.

  Twelve people spoke at the same time. Six teams tried to realize the message of Eumuk.

  The seventh module appeared on a planet where there is no atmosphere, on a planet that is not only absolutely lifeless, but also sterile in the strict sense of the word. None of the most persistent viruses could survive under the rays of the double sun of Praila 1. Eumuc went on the air again.

  - I am ready to consider your suggestions on what to do next, but let's speak one at a time.

  A note of reproach in his voice was enough for the whine to calm down instantly, but Sargnor felt panic growing among the crews. The trouble is that working on a geodesic module never became a profession - it was too simple. Nimble small ones were hired here for a year or two to make a fortune, and then start their own business. And now the very thought of danger terrified them.

  Sargnor at first almost broke out, but then calmed down, remembering that he himself almost succumbed to panic. He joined the cartographic office sixteen years ago with two cousins. They quit long ago and opened their own company, where most of the money accumulated by Sargnor was invested. True, Chris and Karl now demanded that he personally take part in the affairs of the company, otherwise he should take his capital. That is w
hy he had to officially notify his superiors of his resignation. At the age of thirty-six, he was going to finally begin to live humanly: to play golf, go fishing, or maybe marry and have a family. It is a pity that the seventh module got in his way.

  “Captain Evmuk, apparently, another cart ship has been here before us,” Gilpsy quickly chattered from Module Three. - Perhaps a forced landing?

  “No,” answered the Sarafanda firmly. - This possibility is excluded.

  Sargnor pressed the intercom key and asked:

  “Is there any underground installation here?”

  “The map of the planet is not finished yet, but the ship computer has looked through all the available data.” The result is negative.

  Gilpsy from the Third again intervened in the conversation:

  - I understood that this extra module made no attempt to establish communication with the ship or with us. Why?