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

The sun stopped in the sky.
The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away and
they were in an old time, a very old time indeed, three
hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue metal guns
across their knees.
"Christ isn't born yet," said Travis. "Moses has not gone
to the mountain to talk with God. The Pyramids are still in
the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that,
Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitlernone of them exists."
The men nodded.
"That"Mr. Travis pointed"is the jungle of sixty million
two thousand and fifty-five years before President Keith."
He indicated a metal path that struck off into green wil-
derness, over steaming swamp, among giant ferns and
palms.
"And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari for
your use. It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn't touch
so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It's an anti-
gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this
world of the past in any way. Stay on the Path. Don't go
off it. I repeat. Don't go off. For any reason! If you fall off,
there's a penalty. And don't shoot any animal we don't
okay."
"Why?" asked Eckels.
They sat in the ancient wilderness. Far birds' cries blew
on a wind, and the smell of tar and an old salt sea, moist
grasses, and flowers the color of blood.
"We don't want to change the Future. We don't belong
here in the Past. The government doesn't like us here. We
have to pay big graft to keep our franchise. A Time Ma-
chine is damn finicky business. Not knowing it, we might
kill an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a flower even,
thus destroying an important link in a growing species."
"That's not clear," said Eckels.
"All right," Tavis continued, "say we accidentally kill one
mouse here. That means all the future families of this one
particular mouse are destroyed, right?"
"Right."
"And all the families of the families of that one mouse!
With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then
a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible micel"
"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"
"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the
foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten
mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes, a lion starves. For
want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite bil-
lions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction.
Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years
later, a cave man, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes
hunting wild boar or saber-tooth tiger for food. But you,