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

both covered by the same expression in Haertel's equation,
it had never occurred to anyone that the pilot and the ship
might keep different times. The notion was ridiculous.
One-and-a-sevenhundredone, one-and-a-sevenhundredtwo,
one - and - a - sevenhundredthree, one - and - a - sevenhundred
four . . .
The ship was keeping ship-time, which was identical with
observer-time. It would arrive at the Alpha Centauri system
in ten months. But the pilot was keeping Garrard-time, and
it was beginning to look as though he wasn't going to arrive
at all.
It was impossible, but there it was. Somethingalmost
certainly an unsuspected physiological side effect of the over-
drive field on human metabolism, an effect which naturally
could not have been detected in the preliminary, robot-
piloted tests of the overdrivehad speeded up Garrard's
subjective apprehension of time, and had done a thorough
job of it.
The second hand began a slow, preliminary quivering as
the calendar's innards began to apply power to it. Seventy-
hundred-forty-one, seventy-hundred-forty-two, seventy-hun-
dred-forty-three ...
At the count of 7,058 the second hand began the jump to
the next graduation. It took it several apparent minutes to get
across the tiny distance, and several more to come com-
pletely to rest. Later still, the sound came to him:
pock.
In a fever of thought, but without any real physical agita-
tion, his mind began to manipulate the figures. Since it took
him longer to count an individual number as the number be-
came larger, the interval between the two calendar ticks
probably was closer to 7,200 seconds than to 7,058. Figur-
ing backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he
wanted:
One second in ship-time was two hours in Garrard-time.
Had he really been counting for what was, for him, two
whole hours? There seemed to be no doubt about it. It looked
like a long trip ahead.
Just how long it was gong to be struck him with stunning
force. Time had been slowed for him by a factor of 7200. He
would get to Alpha Centauri in just 72,000 months.
Which was
Six thousand years!

Garrard sat motionless for a long time after that, the
Nessus-shirt of warm sweat swathing him persistently, re-
fusing even to cool. There was, after all, no hurry.
Six thousand years. There would be food and water and
air for all that time, or for sixty or six hundred thousand
years; the ship would synthesize his needs, as a matter of