"Bradbury, Ray - Sound of Thunder, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

entire existence, noting which of them lives longest. Very few.
How many times they mate. Not often. Life's short. When
I find one that's going to die when a tree falls on him, or
one that drowns in a tar pit, I note the exact hour, minute,
and second. I shoot a paint bomb. It leaves a red patch
on his hide. We can't miss it. Then I correlate our arrival
in the Past so that we meet -the Monster not more than two
minutes before he would have died anyway. This way, we
kill only animals with no future, that are never going to
mate again. You see how careful we are?"
"But if you came back this morning in Time," said Eckels
eagerly, "you must've bumped into us, our Safari] How did
it turn out? Was it successful? Did all of us get through-
alive?"
Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look.
"That'd be a paradox," said the latter. "Time doesn't
permit that sort of mess a man meeting himself. When such
occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like an airplane
hitting an air pocket. You felt the Machine jump just before
we stopped? That was us passing ourselves on the way
back to the Future. We saw nothing. There's no way of
telling if this expedition was a success, if we got our
monster, or whether all of us meaning you, Mr. Eckels, got out
alive."
Eckels smiled palely.
"Cut that," said Travis sharply. "Everyone on his feet!"
They were ready to leave the Machine.
The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the
jungle was the entire world forever and forever. Sounds
like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and
those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous grey wings,
gigantic bats out of a delirium and a night fever. Eckels,
balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully.
"Stop that!" said Travis. "Don't even aim for fun, damn
it! If your gun should go off"
Eckels flushed. "Where's our Tyrannosaurus?"
Lesperance checked his wrist watch. "Up ahead. Well
bisect his trail in sixty seconds. Look for the red paint, for
Christ's sake. Don't shoot till we give the word. Stay on
the Path. Stay on the path
They moved forward in the wind of morning.
"Strange," murmured Eckels. "Up ahead, sixty million
years, Election Day over. Keith made President. Everyone
celebrating. And here we are, a million years lost, and they
don't exist. The things we worried about for months, a
life-time, not even born or thought about yet."
"Safety catches off, everyone!" ordered Travis. "You, first
shot, Eckels. Second, Billings. Third, Kramer."
"I've hunted tiger, wild boar, buffalo, elephant, but Jesus,
this is it," said Eckels. "I'm shaking like a kid."