"Blish, James - Common Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

back to Earth himself if he so desired. But the computers
were also designed to take into account the fact that he
might be truly dead by the time the DFC-3 got back. After
giving him a solid week, during which time he did nothing
but sleep, they took over again. Radio signals began to go
out, tuned to a special channel.
An hour later, a very weak signal came back. It was only
a directional signal, and it made no sound inside the DFC-3
but it was sufficient to put the big ship in motion again.
It was that which woke Garrard. His conscious mind was
still glazed over with the icy spume of the pseudo-death;
and as far as he could see the interior of the cabin had not
changed one whit, except for the book on the deck
The book. The clinesterton beademung had dropped it
there. But what under God was a clinesterton beademung?
And what was he, Garrard, crying about? It didn't make
sense. He remembered dimly some kind of experience out
there by the Centauri twins
the twin radioceles
There was another one of those words. It seemed to have
Greek roots, but he knew no Greekand besides, why
would Centaurians speak Greek?
He leaned forward and actuated the switch which would
roll the shutter off the front port, actually a telescope with
a translucent viewing screen. It showed a few stars, and a
faint nimbus off on one edge which might be the Sun. At
about one o'clock on the screen, was a planet about the size
of a pea which bad tiny projections, like teacup handles,
on each side. The DFC-3 hadn't passed Saturn on its way
out; at that time it had been on the other side of the Sun
from the route the starship had had to follow. But the
planet was certainly difficult to mistake.
Garrard was on his way homeand he was still alive.
and sane. Or was he still sane? These fantasies about Cen-
taurianswhich still seemed to have such a profound emo-
tional effect upon himdid not argue very well for the stabil-
ity of his mind.
But they were fading rapidly. When he discovered, clutch-
ing at the handiest fragments of the "memories," that the
plural of beademung was beademungen, he stopped taking
the problem seriously. Obviously a race of Centaurians who
spoke Greek wouldn't also be forming weak German plurals.
The whole business had obviously been thrown up by his
unconscious.
But what had he found by the Centaurus stars?
There was no answer to that question but that in-
comprehensible garble about love, the All-Devouring, and
beademungen. Possibly, he had never seen the Centaurus stars
at all, but had been lying here, cold as a mackerel, for the
entire twenty months.