"Clark, Brian - Dinoshift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clark Brian)

snuff out the European upstarts.
Despite Gail's misgivings, the return to Prime was
anticlimactic, proving what Degruton and her own common
sense always insisted--that because Prime's past was
unalterably written into the fabric of spacetime, its
present, although older by the six weeks subjective time
they were away, remained as familiar as an old and
comfortable shoe.
Yet the nagging voice remained, like a constant itch
that could not be scratched--

Gail blurted; "It's not so much what we're doing, Mike,
as the degree of what we're doing! Introducing a few horses
a few hundred years before their time did not seem such a
big deal, yet look how that ended up! Now we are about to do
something on a global scale." She took a deep breath. "All
at once!"
Aware Degruton was also looking at her, she snapped,
"What is the matter, Freddy dear? Am I repeating myself
again?"
"I am afraid you are, dear." He smiled and rubbed a
hand through what was left of his hair. "Anyway, do you
think you can stop it?"
It was not a challenge, he was not that type. It was a
simple question.
Gail admitted wearily, "Of course not. I only report
events, I don't influence them." She hesitated. "But I do
try, don't I?"
"Damn right you do. Fortunately our dedication is
immune even to your charms." Degruton stretched aching
muscles and yawned. "Anyway, one or a thousand new
alternates, it doesn't really matter. Prime will still be
there when we get back; slightly soiled and slightly
glorious as always, but there."
Gail whispered. "But we're about to create a whole new
Earth. Totally different--"
"Create?" Degruton shook his head. "It beats me why you
insist on looking at it that way. We are not God, you know."
"I know. It is what worries me."

Although the calculations were meticulous and had
monopolized the Luna Institute's computers to the extent a
deputation of angry cosmologists demanded Degruton either
stop or get out, the results were still based on theory. So
when one of the detects reported a mass approximately where
and when it was supposed to be, excitement was tempered by
doubt as they waited for refinement of the incoming data.
"Coincidence?", Mike wondered aloud. "Or just bloody
good luck?"
"We will know for sure in an hour or two," Degruton