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

failure to return had resulted from some tampering with the
overdrive, had made everything in the DFC-3 subject only
to the computer. In a very real sense, Garrard was just along
for the ride. Only when the overdrive was off could he
adjust
Pock.
It was a soft, low-pitched noise, rather like a cork coming
out of a wine bottle. It seemed to have come just from the
right of the control chassis. He halted a sudden jerk of his
head on the cushions toward it with a flat fiat of will. Slowly,
he moved his eyes in that direction.
He could see nothing that might have caused the sound.
The ship's temperature dial showed no change, which ruled
out a heat noise from differential contraction or expansion
the only possible explanation he could bring to mind.
He closed his eyesa process which turned out to be just
as difficult as opening them had beenand tried to visualize
what the calendar had looked like when he had first come out
of anesthesia. After he got a clear andhe was almost sure
accurate picture, Garrard opened his eyes again.
The sound had been the calendar, advancing one second.
It was now motionless again, apparently stopped.
He did not know how long it took the second hand to
make that jump, normally; the question had never come up.
Certainly the jump, when it came at the end of each second,
had been too fast for the eye to follow.
Belatedly, he realized what all this cogitation was costing
him in terms of essential information. The calendar had
moved. Above all and before anything else, he must know
exactly how long it took it to move again . . .
He began to count, allowing an arbitrary five seconds lost.
One-and-a-six, one-and-a-seven, one-and-an-eight
Garrard had gotten only that far when he found himself
plunged into hell.
First, and utterly without reason, a sickening fear flooded
swiftly through his veins, becoming more and more intense.
His bowels began to knot, with infinite slowness. His whole
body became a field of small, slow pulsesnot so much shak-
ing him as putting his limbs into contrary joggling motions,
and making his skin ripple gently under his clothing. Against
the hum another sound became audible, a nearly subsonic
thunder which seemed to be inside his head. Still the fear
mounted, and with it came the pain, and the tenesmusa
boardlike stiffening of his muscles, particularly across his
abdomen and his shoulders, but affecting his forearms almost
as grievously. He felt himself beginning, very gradually, to
double at the middle, a motion about which he could do
precisely nothinga terrifying kind of dynamic paralysis. . . .
It lasted for hours. At the height of it, Garrard's mind,
even his very personality, was washed out utterly; he was only