Arkady and Boris Strugatzky
	NATURAL SCIENCES IN THE WORLD OF GHOSTS
	The laboratory assistant Kotchin tip-toed to the door and
looked into the bedroom. The reader was sleeping. He was a fairly
old man and his face looked quite unhappy. He was lying on his
side with a hand under his cheek. When Kotchin opened the door
wider, the reader started and then said clearly:
	"I haven't had enough sleep yet. I still feel like
sleeping."
	Kotchin went to the bed and touched his shoulder.
	"It's time, Mr. Peters. Will you get up, please..."
	Peters opened his unseeing eyes.
	"Just half an hour more." He pleaded.
	Kotchin shook his head with regret.
	"It's out of the question, Mr. Peters. If you sleep more..."
	"I know." The reader said with a sigh. "It'll take the edge
off." He sat up and stretched. "Do you know what I dreamt,
George? I dreamt I was back on my farm in Yukon. As if my son had
come back from Venus and I was showing him the beaver reserve. Do
you know what beavers I've got there, George? They look almost
human."
	The reader dot out of his bed and started his physical
exercises. Kotchin knew well that Peters' son had perished on
Venus two years before, that Peters missed his wife very much,
that he couldn't trust his assistants on the farm and that he was
worried about his beavers, that he felt sad and dull here and
didn't like the job he was doing...
	"It's OK." Said Peters, twisting his hairy body
energetically.
	"You needn't feel sorry for me, Georgy-boy. I understand. If
it's necessary, it's necessary. And nothing can be done..."
	Kotchin's face went red with humiliation. It seemed he would
never learn how to behave in the presence of a reader. Something
awkward happened all the time.
	"You are a good boy, Georgy." Peters said affectionately.
"People usually don't like their thoughts to be read. For that
reason we readers like solitude, and, when we are in company, we
prefer to talk a lot - our silence is often taken as a sign of
reading. There is a young guy around here who never stops
repeating to mathematical formulae himself in my presence. All
for nothing! I can't understand a single formula, although I can
very well feel that he is scared to death of betraying his
affection for a young lady."
	Peters took a towel and went to the bath-room. Kotchin was
quick to wipe his cold forehead dry.
	"Thank God I'm not in love with anybody!" A false note rang
in his thoughts.
	"Katya's feelings could be hurt. What excellent people these
readers are. I wonder if he could read behind the door of the
bath-room. We certainly bore him to death with our experiments
but he gives back as good as he gets... No doubt, the young guy
is Petya Bistrov. But who could the object of his love be?"
	"I'm not telling you that." Announced Peters, appearing from
the bath-room. "OK, Georgy, I am ready. What's on for today? The
torture chamber again?"
	"Again." Said Kotchin. "As usual. Won't you have your
breakfast?"
	"No, thank you." Answered Peters. "Food makes me as dull as
sleep does. Give me just a little glucose, please."
	He rolled up his sleeve. Kotchin took out of his pocket a
flat box with phials of glucose, took one and pressed it into a
big vein on Peters' arm. When the glucose was sucked in, Peters
took the empty phial away and rolled down his sleeve.
	"Well, let's go and suffer." He sighed.
	-----
	The Space Physics Institute had been built on the island of
Kotlin in Finnish Bay two years ago. The old Kronstadt had been
completely taken down except for a few grey walls of ancient
forts covered with moss and a gold monument to the participants
in the Great Revolution in the park of the campus. An artificial
archipelago had been created with air- and space-fields,
power-receiving and power-generating oil stations. The far
western islands of the archipelago were occupied by the so-called
"noisy" laboratories - explosions took place there and fires
broke out every now and then. Theoretical research and "quiet"
experiments were carried out in the long, flat-roofed buildings
of the Kotlin' Institute.
	The Institute was engaged in advanced scientific research.
It covered an extraordinarily wide range of topics, concerning
gravity, deretrinitation, new axiomatics of physics, the theory
of discrete spaces, and many other more specialized and narrower
problems. The Institute often undertook the research of a problem
that seemed, and in the end turned out to be, hopelessly
complicated and inaccessible. And more often than not, the
experimental approaches to these problems led to gigantic
consumption of power. Time and again, the Institute authorities
would pester the World Council to be permitted to use an amount
of energy equal to the total consumption on the planet for one
hour, for two hours, or even for a whole day sometimes. On clear
days the citizens of Leningrad could see the glaring spheres of
the power-receivers over the horizon, set up on the outer islands
of the Kotlin Archipelago. A clever guy (from the Resources
Committee) called the power-receivers "Danaidean barrels", having
in mind the fact that the planet's energy disappeared in them as
if they were barrels without bottoms with no tangible results;
the work of the Institute was discussed with irritation among
many members of the Council, and yet energy demands met no
refusal because it was considered that humanity was rich and
could afford expenses on the-day-after-tomorrow problems. Even
for work on the Great Shaft, which was being dug to the planet's
heart.
	Four years back, a team of Institute researchers had carried
out an experiment aiming to measure the distribution of energy at
sigma-deretrinitation. On the edge of the Solar-system, far
beyond Transplutonian orbit, two identical space-crafts had been
accelerated to relativistic velocities and brought into collision
at the relative speed of 295 000 km per second. The explosion had
been spectacular; the mass of both space-crafts had been almost
entirely transformed into radiation, they had disappeared in a
blinding burst, leaving behind a small and rare cloud of metal
steam. Having finished their measurements, the researchers had
found an energy defect - a relatively small, but easily
detectable, part of the energy had "disappeared". As far as the
quality of the experimental results was concerned, there was
nothing unexpected. According to the theory of
sigma-deretrinitation, a certain part of the energy had to
disappear at a given point in space, so that it could re-appear,
in one or another form, probably, in a place too far from that of
the experiment. However, that was the essence of the
Sigma-D-principle and something like that had happened at the
time with the widely-known "Timer". It was the quantity of the
energy defect that exceeded the expected amount. A part of the
energy had disappeared and no one knew where. Two opposing
conceptions were put forward for the explanation of this newly
observed contradiction to the laws of preservation. The first of
them was a hypothesis that the energy had been transformed into a
yet unknown form, e.g. a kind of an unknown to scientists field,
undetectable and unmeasurable with the existing devices. The
Theory of Inter-penetrating Spaces formed the basis of the second
one.
	The Theory of Inter-penetrating Spaces had been worked out
long before the above mentioned experiment. This theory presented
the world as an infinite sum of inter-penetrating spaces of quite
different properties. It claimed that this difference in
properties made possible the physical co-existence of the spaces
without any observable interaction. Generally, it was an abstract
theory that hadn't led to any definite formulae proved by an
experiment. It followed from the theory, however, that the
different forms of matter had different abilities to penetrate
neighboring spaces. It was also argued that the greater the
concentration of energy, the easier the penetration process took
place. The concentration of electromagnetic field energy during
the experiment with the two space-crafts had been great. That
could lead to the assumption that the leak of energy might be
explained by the transfer of energy from our space to a
neighboring one. Data was scarce but the idea was so fascinating
that it found immediate support in the Institute.
	The researchers from the Department of Discrete Space
Physics started experimental work on the theory of
inter-penetrating spaces. They rejected right away the
large-scale, dangerous and rather unprecise experiments connected
with the absorption and liberation of great amounts of energy.
Moreover, such experiments left the problem of unknown fields
open. The research work on space permeability was planned to be
carried out in a variety of fields - gravitational,
electromagnetic, and nuclear. The highest trump in the stack, and
their greatest hope, was the brilliant idea of a researcher who
had observed a remarkable analogy between the brain-created
psycho-dynamic field and the hypothetical "link field"; their
common mathematical description had already been worked out by
the theory of inter-penetrating spaces at the time when
researchers in psychodynamics had no mathematical apparatus at
their disposal. The hypothetical "link field" had, according to
that theory, the maximum ability to penetrate from one field into
a neighboring one. There were no sufficiently sensitive detectors
of psycho-dynamic fields, or, respectively, of link fields, so
readers were drawn into the fight.
	Ten billion people lived on the planet and only a hundred
and twenty two readers were on file. Readers can read thoughts.
The mystery of that extraordinary ability was far from solved.
The only known facts were that they were hyper-sensitive to the
psycho-dynamic waves coming from the human brain and that they
were born with that sensitiveness. Some readers were very
powerful: they could receive and decode the thoughts of a man who
was thousands of miles away. Others could receive psycho-dynamic
signals only in the range of a few steps. Parapsychologists held
two conflicting opinions: some argued that readers were the first
heralds of a new mankind, coming up the stair-case of evolution,
while others maintained that the phenomenon was nothing else than
an atavism, a remnant of the mysterious sixth sense that had
helped our ancestors find their way in the wilderness. Two of the
strongest readers worked on Long-distance Communication Stations,
doubling conventional radio-communication with distant
expeditions. Many worked as physicians, and many others held jobs
that had nothing to do with reading thoughts.
	Whatever the truth, the research workers at the Institute of
Space Physics hoped that readers could manage to "hear" the link
field. That would serve as irrefutable proof of the theory of
inter-penetrating spaces. The best readers on the planet gathered
on the island of Kotlin at the invitation of the Institute. The
scheme was quite simple. If the link field existed, it would be,
in theory, analogous to the psycho-dynamic field created by the
human brain and, therefore, it could be received by readers. If
the readers were isolated in a special chamber, shielded by a
thick layer of meso-substance from the outer world, human
thoughts included, the gravitational field of Earth would remain
the only field inside the chamber and it was known to be
indifferent to both psycho-dynamic and "link" fields. Certainly,
the experiment was far from being ideal. Only a positive result
could solve the problem. A negative answer would mean nothing -
it would neither refute, nor prove the theory.  Yet that was the
only chance at this time. The readers' brain sensitivity was
activated by neutrino irradiation and then they were placed in
chambers to listen.
	-----
	Peters and Kotchin took their time walking along the main
street of the Academic town. The morning was foggy and somewhat
grey, the sun hadn't risen yet, but the lattice towers of the
energy-receivers could be seen, lit up in pink, far, far away and
at a great height. Peters walked with his hands behind his back,
humming under his nose a song of how "Johnny is coming down to
Hillow, poor old man."
	Kotchin walked beside him with an air of independence on his
face, making efforts not to think. In front of a cottage, Peters
stopped humming and came to a halt.
	"We'll have to wait." He said.
	"Why so?" Kotchin inquired.
	"Siverson has asked me to wait." He nodded in the direction
of the cottage. "He is already putting his coat on."
	"One, two, three - I am free." Kotchin said to himself. "Two
readers make two times... five times five - nine, or something of
that kind."
	"You mean Siverson is alone? He doesn't have a companion?"
	"Five times five makes twenty-five." Grumbled Peters. "I
don't know why you haven't attached a companion to him."
	Siverson appeared at the door-step of the cottage, buttoning
his coat up to the chin.
	"Don't be cross, young fellow." Siverson scolded Kotchin.
"At your age we were much more polite..."
	"Come on, Siverson, old boy." Said Peters. "You know very
well you don't mean it... Thank you, I've slept well. You know,
I've seen beavers in my dream. And as if my Harry has flown back
home from Venus..."
	Siverson stepped down on the pavement and took Peters under
his arm.
	"Let's go." He said. "Beavers... I feel myself a beaver
these days. You can dream at least, but what about me. Have I
told you, Peters, that a grand-daughter was born to me and I
haven't even had a look at her yet... It surely is nonsense,
don't argue with me..."
	Kotchin went stumbling along behind the two readers.
	"An integral from zero to infinity, 'e' to the power of
minus 'x' squared, a root of 'pi' divided by two... A
circumference is a geometrical figure of points at equal distance
from..."
	Old Siverson kept grumbling.
	"I am a physician and I know every man in our village, every
single man, together with nine generations of his forefathers,
and every man knows me... Every single day of my life I'd run to
the aid of a man because I could hear their thoughts... Now I'm
ashamed and depressed, ashamed and depressed, sitting all by
myself in that damn gaol and listening... to what? ... To ghosts'
whispers! The whispering of some mythical ghosts, born by a
perverted imagination! Don't argue, Peters. I'm twice your age!"
	The unwritten code of readers excluded the exchange of
thoughts in the presence of non-readers. Kotchin was a non-reader
and he was present. He kept mumbling to himself.
	"The mathematical expectation of the sum of accidental
quantities is equal to the sum of their mathematical
expectations... I've got some really good words to say to that...
So, the sum of their mathematical... mathematical
expectations..."
	"We were torn away from our routine work..." Siverson went
on rubbing it in. "We've been thrown into the grey fog... Don't
argue, Peters, that's right, we have been thrown here! At least,
I have... I couldn't make myself refuse when I was asked, but
nothing can make me take this request as anything else but an act
of violence... Don't argue, Peters, I'm your elder! I've never
regretted being a reader in my whole life. Oh, you have! That's
your problem. Certainly, beavers don't need readers... And
people, ill and suffering people, do need them..."
	"Wait a minute, old boy." Said Peters. "As you might have
seen, people in good health need readers, too... In good health
and searching..."
	"Who, according to you, is in good health ?" Siverson
shouted out. "All those physicists-alchemists? What do you think?
Why haven't I left the place yet? By hell, I can't hurt them! Oh,
no, young fellow." He stopped with a jerk and turned back to
Kotchin.
	"There are not that many people like me! Old and experienced
readers! You can stop repeating all that nonsense, I can hear
very well where you are sending me to! Peters, don't stand up for
that suckling, I know what I saying! I'm older than both of you -
even if you multiplied your years!"
	"Sixty-two multiplied by twenty-one." Kotchin kept thinking,
red and perspiring with anger. "It makes... it makes... six by
two. You are a liar, old man, you can't be that old... Ah,
well...'An angel was flying across the night sky...' Who wrote
the poem? Lermontov?"
	A hoarse voice announced on the loudspeaker.
	"Attention, please! We are broadcasting the warning of the
local weather-forecast micro-station. A moderate rain-fall will
be provoked over the east end of the island of Kotlin between
9.30 and 10.05 a.m. The west border of the fall will pass along
the side of the park."
	"How prudent of you, Siverson," said Peters, "to put your
coat on."
	"I am not prudent." Murmured Siverson back. "I simply
intercepted the decision of the weather-men while they were
discussing it at six o'clock this morning."
	"Well, he really is some reader!" Kotchin thought
fascinated.
	"You are a very powerful reader." Said Peters with enormous
respect.
	"It was a piece of cake." Siverson snapped back.
"Twenty-three kilometers in all. You would have intercepted the
thought as well, if you hadn't been sleeping. And I suffer from
insomnia on this foggy island."
	When they reached the end of the small town, a third reader
caught up with them. He was a young reader, good-looking,
impressive, and self-confident. He was in an artistically draped
toga. He was accompanied by Petya Bistrov.  While the readers
were exchanging unuttered morning greetings, Petya Bistrov,
stealing glances at them, put his hand on his throat and said
with his lips only.
	"Oh, I feel so bad!"
	Kotchin threw his arms out.
	For a while the readers walked in silence. Kotchin and
Bistrov followed a few steps behind them, their heads hanging.
Suddenly, Siverson roared.
	"Will you, please, voice your words, McKonty. Be kind enough
to speak in a loud voice in the presence of non-readers."
	"Siverson, dear!" There was reproach in Peters' voice.
	With a gallant gesture McKonty threw his toga open and said.
	"Well, I could repeat it in words. I've got nothing to hide.
I can't receive anything in these damn chambers. There is nothing
to be received there, there's absolutely nothing to be received."
	"That's none of your business, young man." Started Siverson.
"I stay here although I'm older than you, I don't complain and
I'll stay here as long as the scientists need us. And if they ask
us to stay, that means they must have got some good reason for
it. ("Siverson, my dear fellow!" said Peters.) Certainly this is
much more boring than hanging around the streets in that hideous
golden chlamyd of yours and listening in on people's thoughts.
And then making the young ladies lose their heads. Don't deny it,
McKonty, that's what you do."
	McKonty dropped his head and for some time they walked in
silence. Then Peters said.
	"Unfortunately, McKonty is right. No, I don't mean that he
is right eavesdropping on what people think, by no means... I
don't receive anything either. Neither do you, Siverson. I'm
afraid the experiment is a failure."
	Siverson uttered something unintelligible.
	"Anyway," said McKonty, "the experiment has played its role
as far as we, the readers, are concerned. It seems to be the
first time when the best readers on the Planet are gathered at
the same place. I think we should take the opportunity and
discuss a number of problems that concern us. I've been busy
working out a plan for the First Readers' Congress. Our number is
small, but we are a force and we should have united a long time
ago in a kind of a trade union. It's time to put up our demands
for special rights for readers. What do you think of that,
Peters?"
	Peters said slowly:
	"First, I am not Peters, I am Mister Peters. Second, your
idea of a trade union... calm down, Siverson... well, I find it
an evil born by a delirious mind. You've been reading too many
books on secret organizations, McKonty. Siverson, dear, once
again, please, calm down. Third, you are planning to make demands
for special rights in front of the people. And who are you? Do
you come from Mars? Who has brought you up, McKonty? Whose bread
do you eat? And who has given you this?" Peters raised with two
fingers the hem of the extravagant toga. "Shame on you, McKonty!"
	Silence descended and, in that silence, they reached the
building of the Institute. At the entrance Siverson said.
	"It was your luck, McKonty, that you shared your idea with
us first. Younger people would spoil your toga. I'd like you to
come and see me at my place this evening at 8 o'clock. And take
care of your toga, please. At least, till the evening comes."
	-----
	The heavy titanium-steel shield, both sides covered with
meso-substance, closed down slowly and Peters was alone. He sat
down in the arm-chair at the bare table and got ready to spend
ten boring hours there. Under the conditions of the experiment,
he was supposed neither to read nor write. He had to sit and
"listen" to silence. And the silence that reigned was profound.
The meso-shield isolated the chamber from any thought, and in it,
for the first time in his life, Peters felt the extremely
unpleasant sensation of being deaf. Probably the designers of the
chamber didn't have the slightest idea that silence was the
optimum condition for the experiment. Willy-nilly, the deaf
reader strained his senses to intercept even the slightest
signal. Neither were they aware of the sufferings a reader
experienced in that silent chamber for ten hours after being
accustomed to the ceaseless noise of people's thoughts. Peters
called it a "torture chamber" and many other readers had started
calling it that as well.
	"I have sat here for a hundred and ten hours." Thought
Peters.
	"They'll be a hundred and twenty by the end of today. And
nothing. No trace of the damn link field that has occupied the
minds of our poor physicists. And yet, more than a hundred hours
is a long time. What do they rely on? A hundred readers and each
has sat for, say, a hundred hours - that makes ten thousand
hours. Ten thousand hours and all for nothing! Poor, poor
physicists! Poor, poor readers! And my poor, poor beavers! Pete
Ballantine is a greenhorn, a boy, a zoologist since yesterday. I
can feel that he is always late with their food. I'll have to
send another radiogram this evening. But he is as stubborn as a
mule. He'll hear nothing about the specific conditions in
Yukon... And Winter is also a greenhorn, a numb hand..." Peters
was furious. "And Eugene - she is a green, priggish fool..."
	"Beavers have to be loved. Tenderly. With all the heart one
has. And they'll come out to you on the bank and caress your hand
with their muzzles. Oh, how sweet their muzzles are! And all
those beast-breeders - they've only but a single thought on their
minds... Of science. How to skin two coats off one beaver and
make it grow a third one. Oh, Harry, I don't have... Oh, Harry,
if you knew how I miss you, my boy."
	"I can remember the day he came to me... As if it were
yesterday... When was it...? In January... no, in February, 119.
He came to say he would volunteer for Venus. That's what he
said."
	"Papa, please, forgive me - but our place is there now."
Then he flew back twice - in 121 and 125. The older beavers would
remember him and he remembered each of them to the last. He used
to tell me he had come back because he felt homesick, but I knew
he had to undergo medical treatment. Oh, Harry, Harry, now we
could take all our beavers to Venus and start a farm there. It
could be done now. So many various kinds of animals are being
transported there. But you are no longer alive, my boy."
	Peters took out a handkerchief and dried his eyes, got up
and started walking to and fro.
	"A damn useless chamber. I wonder how long they are going to
keep us here." He thought of the hundred readers shuffling about
like him - each in his chamber. Old, cross Siverson who managed
to be bitter and nice at the same time. And that narcistic fool
McKonty... However, McKonty most probably sat as quiet as a
mouse, thinking of his coming encounter with Siverson. Where did
people like McKonty spring from? Perhaps they could be found only
among readers. And all that was, because readerism, like it or
not, was a deformity. Fortunately, people like McKonty were rare
even among readers. And even rarer among professional readers.
Take Yuri Russakov, for instance, a long-distance communications
officer. Many readers worked on long-distance communication
stations but Yuri Russakov was said to be the most powerful. He
was even said to be the best reader in the world. He could even
pick up the direction. They were very few, those who could pick
up a direction. He had been a reader since his early childhood
and he had known it all the time. And yet, he was a nice boy,
full of joy. He had been brought up well, no one had made an
infant prodigy out of him in his first years. Over-loving parents
could do the worst harm to a child. But he had been brought up at
a proper school and he was an excellent guy. He was said to have
cried when receiving the last signals from "Explorer". After the
accident there had been only one man left alive on the "Explorer"
- a young trainee, Walter Saroyan. A very, very promising boy,
most probably. A man of iron will. Mortally injured, he had tried
to find out the cause of the accident... and he had done it. How
could a man forget people like him."
	Peters concentrated his attention. He thought he had just
felt the sensation of something quite unfamiliar crossing his
mind as a light, hardly perceptible shadow. No... It was just the
echo coming back from the walls. He wondered how "that thing"
would be felt? According to Georgy-boy it would be theoretically
perceived as a kind of noise. But, naturally, he couldn't explain
what sort of a noise it could be. Whenever he tried, he would
either go back to mathematics or make an analogy with
out-of-order radio-sets. Physicists knew only in theory what the
noise was, but had never sensed it, while readers, being ignorant
of theory, had perhaps heard that noise dozens of times a day
without any knowledge of the fact.
	"What a pity it is that there are no physicists among
readers! Let's hope that Yuri Russakov will be the first. He or
some another young fellow, working on a long-distance
communication station... It's good we can instinctively tell our
thoughts from the thoughts of other people and can mistake an
echo for a real signal only by chance..."
	Peters sat down and stretched his legs. Yet, those
physicists had organized some great fun - a hunt for ghosts from
alien worlds. Natural sciences in the world of ghosts - that's
what it was. He looked at his watch. Only half an hour had
passed. So let them be ghosts they'd listen to.
	Exactly at 9 p.m. Peters went to the door. The heavy shield
of titanium steel went up and Peters' mind was immediately
invaded by people's agitated thoughts. He saw the tense expectant
faces of the physicists and he shook his head as usual. He felt a
deep sympathy for those clever young men, he had repeatedly tried
to imagine how wonderful it would be if he smiled at them from
the doorstep, saying:
	"The link field exists, I have sensed your link field."
	But he could do nothing if the link field either did not
exist or was beyond his powers.
	"Nothing." He said loudly and started to go along the
corridor.
	"Too bad." Said one of the physicists in despair. He was
used to saying "too bad" each time.  Peters went up to him and
put his hand on the physicist's shoulder.
	"Listen." He said. "Maybe we have done enough. You might
have made a mistake."
	The physicist gave him a tense smile.
	"How can you say that, Mr. Peters? We are only at the
beginning of the experiment. We didn't expect very much at this
stage... We'll intensify the activation... yes, activation... If
you would only go on..."
	"We'll have to accumulate a great deal of data for
statistical work. Only then can we draw any conclusions... We
rely very much on you, Mr. Peters, on you personally and on your
friends."
	"Yes." Said Peters. "Certainly."
	He could see well enough that they had nothing left to hope
for. But for a miracle. Yet, it could happen... Anything could
happen.
	