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

And beside it, all too clearly in that inanimate scene, was a human skeleton.
The picture did not change. It just remained on the screen before us as the camera had gone on
recording it until, as Galbraith told us, it had run out of film. For the camera, clock and instruments
remained far longer on 'the other side' as it was only possible to call it, than they were actually away from
the laboratory.
But Galbraith did not tell us that. As we all sat silent in the dark projection room he began to tell us
other things.
'It was a pity that Sara Francis saw these pictures when we first took them,' he said quite quietly,
speaking to us from the place he had taken at the end of the first row of the rank of chairs. 'We had no
idea, when we first took them, that we were going to get a scene like this. We had no idea when we took
the first dark pictures we were going to get a skeleton. And we had no idea until we took these last good
ones that we were going to be able to confirm that it was hers.'
I felt a sudden impulse of horror. Sitting there, looking at that screen-picture, and listening to
Galbraith, I all but disbelieved it. I thought of the girl I had just been talking to, not much more than an
hour ago, and her vivid life and youth and enthusiasm as she worked and talked with Strassen. But
Galbraith was inexorable. We could guess that in his mind there was nothing that could be left to chance.
'We had to tell her too, you see,' he said. 'We had to say why we wanted the X-ray photographs of
her, to compare them with the skeleton. She herself is intelligent. She had to see for herself, to save us
from lying as she called it. She doesn't know quite all of it. She hasn't the medical knowledge to compare
the absence of thickening of those nasal bones in the skull with herself as she is today. She knows that
that can't be a picture of her skeleton taken when she's very old. But she doesn't know how accurately
we can say that if she is going to become like that, and therefore if this disaster, this cataclysm is going to
happen all around the laboratory, it must be within a year or two, or probably much, much sooner.'
We had been paralysed, not only I but the civilians present and perhaps even General Bridger, by the
disastrous picture on the screen and what Galbraith was saying about it. But the Senator got his breath.
'For God's sake!' he said. 'You have that, you actually have that picture, taken out of a camera from
your synchrotron, and you mean you still have that girl around here? Get her out! You don't mean you
still let her into the laboratory?'
The Senator sounded as though he expected the synchrotron, the university, and all Lake Valley, to
blow up at any moment. I think we all felt that. It was, after all, a camera picture. And the skeleton, if it
had been proved to be Sara Francis, and a young Sara Francis, was damning. It was a threat, something
more than a threat, that was beyond all believing.
'Wait!' Galbraith said. 'I called you here to this conference on the assumption that we had to act. But
do what? This is scientific phenomenon and we can only approach it scientifically. We can only aim to
find out more. And we have found out a little more already.'
'Find out, hell!' the Senator roared. 'Get everyone out! Close down that synchrotron! And clear the
area!'
Galbraith went on, not the voice of sweet reason exactly, but deliberately, doggedly and obstinately.
He went on just as though the Senator had not spoken.
'You see the first question is whether this is the future,' he said. 'It's hard to see how we can find that
out, the status and nature of the observation, and whether or not it is some kind of illusion, unless we
send a man. But suppose it is the future. As a hypothesis we have supposed it. A few things follow. That
control desk in the picture is fairly clear. It's possible to work on the basis of the visible tarnish of the
metal parts and other things. You might say that if it is the future then this picture was taken, if "was" is the
word, about a hundred years ahead from now.'
'You're mad, Professor,' said Secretary Stephens softly.
'Not mad,' said Galbraith, concluding in the darkened room. 'Just doing what I always have done,
which is to apply my intelligence to what we have. This picture is taken a hundred years from now. The
disaster it records, on the face of it, is going to happen within the next few months. And it isn't local. Just
look at that mountain chain outside the cave. But it won't happen today, tomorrow. That skeleton