"Aldiss, Brian W - Short Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

watch, and there is so much I long to say. But it's 11.06 and a
bit by his time, and he already knows I can't say anything. It's
such an effort of endurance, talking across this three and a bit
minutes; we might just as well be talking across an interstellar
distance.'
Evidently he too had lost the thread of the exercise, for he
smiled and stretched out a hand, holding it in the air. Janet
looked round. Clem Stackpole was coming out towards them
with a tray full of drinks. He set it carefully down on the
lawn, and picked up a martini, the stem of which he slipped
between Jack's fingers.
"Cheers!" he said, smiling, and, "Here's your tipple," giving
Janet her gin and tonic. He had brought himself a bottle of
pale ale.
"Can you make my position clearer to Janet, Clem? She
does not seem to understand it yet."
Angrily, she turned to the behaviourist. "This was meant to
be a private talk, Mr. Stackpole, between my husband and
myself."
"Sorry you're not getting on too well, then. Perhaps I can
help sort you out a bit. It is difficult, I know."
3.3077
Powerfully, he wrenched the top off the beer bottle and
poured the liquid into the glass. Sipping, he said, "We have
always been used to the idea that everything moves forward in
time at the same rate. We speak of the course of time,
presuming it only has one rate of flow. We've assumed, too,
that anything living on another planet in any other part of our
universe might have the same rate of flow. In other words,
although we've long been accustomed to some oddities of
time, thanks to relativity theories, we have accustomed our-
selves, perhaps, to certain errors of thinking. Now we're going
to have to think differently. You follow me."
"Perfectly."
"The universe is by no means the simple box our predeces-
sors' imagined. It may be that each planet is encased in its own
time field, just as it is in its own gravitational field. From the
evidence, it seems that Mars's time field is 3.3077 minutes
ahead of ours on Earth. We deduce this from the fact that
your husband and the eight other men with him on Mars
experienced no sensation of temporal difference among them-
selves, and were unaware that anything was untoward until
they were away from Mars and attempted to get into com-
munication again with Earth, when the temporal discrepancy
at once showed up. Your husband is still living in Mars time.
Unfortunately, the other members of the crew did not survive
the crash; but we can be sure that if they did, they too would
suffer from the same effect. That's clear, isn't it?"
"Entirely. But I still cannot see why this effect, if it is as
you say'"