[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Thenanother thought occurred to her. What about the press tickets for tomorrow? she asked. There aren t any for the conference proper, I told her. There will be astatement afterwards. She stared at me. Aren t any?For heaven s sake! How do they expect us to do our job? she exclaimed, andsat there brooding.When Phyllis said our job the words did not connote exactly what they wouldhave implied a few days before.The job somehow changed quality under ourfeet.The task of persuading the public of the reality of the unseen,indescribable menace had turned suddenly into one of keeping up morale in theface of a menace which everyone now accepted to the point of panic.E.B.C.rana feature called News-Parade in which we appeared to have assumed the rolesof special oceanic correspondents, without being quite sure how it hadoccurred.In point of fact, Phyllis had never been on the E.B.C.Page 36 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlstaff, and I had technically left it when I ceased, officially, to have anoffice there some two years before.Nobody, however, seemed to be aware ofthis except the accounts department which now paid by the piece instead of bythe month.All the same, there was not going to be much freshness of treatmentin our assignment if we could get no nearer to the sources than officialhandouts.Phyllis was still brooding about it when I left her to go back tothe office I officially didn t have in E.B.C.We did our best during the next few days to play our part in putting acrossthe idea of firm hands steady on the wheel, and of the backroom boys who hadproduced radar, asdic, another marvels nodding confidently, and saying, ineffect: Sure.Just give us a few days to think, and we ll knock togethersomething that will settle this lot! There was a satisfactory feeling that confidence was gradually being restored.Perhaps the main stabilizing factor, however, emerged from a difference ofopinion on one of the technical committees.General agreement had been reached that a torpedolike weapon designed to givesubmerged escort to a vessel could profitably be developed to counter theassumed mine form of attack.The motion was accordingly put that all shouldpool information likely to help in the development of such a weapon.The Russian delegates demurred.Remote control of missiles, they pointed outwas, of course, a Russian invention in any case.Moreover, Russian scientists,zealous in the fight for Peace, had already developed such control to a degreegreatly in advance of that achieved by the capitalist-ridden science of theWest.It could scarcely be expected of the Soviets that they should make apresent of their discoveries to warmongers.The Western spokesman replied that, while respecting the intensity of thefight forPeace and the fervor with which it was being carried on in every department ofSoviet science except, of course, the biological, the West would remind theSoviets that thiswas a conference of peoples faced by a common danger and resolved to meet itby cooperation.The Russian leader responded frankly that he doubted whether, if the West hadhappened to possess a means of controlling a submerged missile by radio, suchas has been invented by Russian engineers, they would care to share suchknowledge with the Soviet people.The Western spokesman assured the Soviet representative that since the Westhad called the conference for the purpose of cooperation, it felt in dutybound to state that it had indeed perfected such a means of control as theSoviet delegate had mentioned.Following a hurried consultation, the Russian delegate announced that hebelieved if such a claim to be true, he would also know that it could onlyhave come about through the theft of the work of Soviet scientists bycapitalist hirelings.And, since neither a lying claim, nor the admission ofsuccessful espionage showed that disinterest in national advantage which theconference had professed, his delegation was left with no alternative but towithdraw.This action, with its reassuring ring of normality, exerted a valuabletranquilizing influence.Amid the widespread satisfaction and resuscitating confidence, the voice ofBocker, dissenting, rose almost alone: It was late, he proclaimed, but itstill might not be too late to make some last attempt at a pacific approach tothe sources of the disturbance.They had already been shown to possess a technology equal to, if not superiorto, our own.In an alarmingly short time they had been able not only toestablish themselves, but to produce the means of taking effective action fortheir self-defense
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]