"Rex Gordon - The Time Factor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Rex)

open on the bench and divided into two halves. Mounted in the lower half already was a mass of intricate
apparatus, a battery power pack and a series of electric eyes and instruments all mounted on a metal
sub-frame. But already in pride of place in the completed framework was a complicated camera with a
turret of different lenses and machinery to change them and tilt and pan the camera and alter aperture and
focus.
'What is it? ' the General said.
'Our robot observer,' Strassen said. 'Able to illuminate and focus on every detail of the cave. More
than that. Able to turn an astronomical telescope lens on the night sky outside the cave and take records
that will tell us exactly when the pictures are being taken: the date and season of the year while registering
climatic and every other kind of data. This plastic sphere itself,' he tapped its hard and glass-like surface,
'is designed already to take advantage of the maximum volume of material the synchrotron can handle. If
you insist on sending a man, then all you have to do is take all the machinery out and put in a seat or
whatever else you think you need to make a human observer comfortable.'
His voice was cold and he was looking at the General. His attitude was restrained and remote, I
thought, and distinctly lacking in that enthusiasm of which I knew him capable. The General saw it too.
'You say if we "insist" on sending a man?' he said.
'Your man isn't going to take observations as accurately as this machine,' said Strassen.
'A man can get out of the sphere and climb over the rocks and look what's outside the cave!' the
General said.
'What for?' said Strassen.
We were all standing crowded before the bench and we had been examining the machine, but now
we were looking at the two of them and they were the only ones who were talking.
It was a conflict of temperament largely, I realized, between Strassen whose approach was scientific,
who wanted observations mostly, and to whom they were most real, most valid and useful, when they
consisted of accurate photographs and graphs on paper, and the General who wanted action. But it was
something more than that.
'Dammit, man, this isn't just an academic scientific experiment! It isn't detailed photographs of the
cave we want, but to know whether it is really there or not, and if so if that damned new mountain chain
is there outside it or if it's an illusion! If it's true, we've got to know that as soon as possible and see what
we can do about it!'
'That's what I mean,' said Strassen. 'You can't do anything.'
The General stared as though Strassen were some raw recruit who had not yet been taught that the
army did not know the meaning of 'impossible'.
'As you say,' Strassen said, 'you want to know whether the cave of which we have got pictures is true
or not. You mean you want to know whether it is the future or not. But if it isn't the future, you don't need
to bother. You don't need to do anything about it because in that case it isn't so. But if it is the future, you
can't do anything about it. The fact that you could alter it in any way would prove it was not the future.'
'Metaphysics!' the General said.
'Not so,' said Strassen. 'Just logic. If these pictures we've got, of a disaster in our laboratory that has
become a cave, do represent the future, then so far as they are concerned whatever we are doing now
has already happened. They mean that the future is there, it's fixed, it's final, emerging out of some
causation that took place in our present and its past. The future must be like that if the scientific
presumption that every event must have a material cause is true. The theory of causation implies
determinism. It means that whatever you do now, no matter what you do, must contribute to the future as
it's going to be. No matter what you do now, your actions must be part and parcel of the creation of that
future. It must be so or there would be no logic and no science. We would have events happening in the
present that were not caused and had no connection with anything in the past. The answer would be
chaos.'
Strassen had paled slightly. He did not find it easy to stand up to the General. But his dictum was
staggering in its implications. It was as staggering as the youthful assumption of intellectual superiority with