The Penal Colony by Richard Herley

Author:Richard Herley [Herley, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Feedbooks (www.feedbooks.com)
Published: 2008-02-26T17:04:54+00:00

Godwin’s workshop was much better finished than King’s shack, with a flagstone floor and windows of real glass. It consisted of one large and one small room, together with Godwin’s bedroom and kitchen. For Fitzmaurice, Godwin’s assistant, there was a folding bunk in the main workshop.

“This is where you’ll be sitting, Mr Routledge,” Godwin said, indicating a small plywood table set against the wall. “You can have that orange chair. Fetch it, will you please.” Routledge went to the bench and collected the plastic stacking chair, much faded and scuffed, taken no doubt from the laboratory in the bungalow. “Extra paper’s in that cupboard. Waste as little as possible.” Godwin motioned that Routledge should be seated. Already waiting on the table were a propelling pencil, a ruler, a solar-powered calculator, and a pile of scrap paper.

“Something relatively easy to start with. I want you to draw some graphs. You’ll have to make your own graph paper. Do it as accurately as you can. Then plot these equations. There are twenty of them.”

“Right.” Routledge accepted the sheet of paper and glanced at the equations, which had been numbered and written out in blue ballpoint. Below them was another, unnumbered, equation and a line of figures.

The light from the window flashed momentarily in Godwin’s glasses. The style of the dark plastic frames, which held the lenses in place with a single heavy bar, was distinctly old-fashioned. He wheezed slightly when he spoke, as if he suffered from asthma or emphysema. At one time he might have smoked a pipe and worn cardigans with leather elbow-patches, and spent his evenings tinkering in a basement den.

“Now, yesterday you said you were familiar with the evaluation of definite integrals. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember Simpson’s Rule?”

“Finding the area enclosed by a curve?”

“That’s the one. Or you can use Dufton’s Rules. However you do it, I want the areas of the curves between the ordinates x equals zero and x equals thirty-six. Two per cent accuracy will do for now. Then substitute each of the equations generating the three smallest areas for theta in the master equation. Evaluate alpha for these values of x. Got it?”

Routledge nodded.

“Any questions?”

“No, Mr Godwin. Not that I can think of.”

“Fine. Give me a shout if there are.”

Godwin returned to the bench, where Fitzmaurice, leaning on one elbow and cradling his temple in his fingers, had been using a pencil point to trace the flow of current in a large circuit diagram.

“It’s here,” he said to Godwin. “Look.”

“All right. So what does that imply?”

“A glitch somewhere in the filter.”

“Got to be.”

They fell silent, both poring over the diagram.

Routledge turned to the sheet of equations. Theta was usually an angle. His suspicions about the nature of the project began to take more definite form. Acoustics, electronics: they were trying to build an echo sounder. Echo sounders were used to identify obstacles on the sea bed. Rocks, for example. Or to find clear channels for navigation. A boat. Franks was planning a boat. There could no longer be the slightest doubt about it.

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