"Simon Hawke - Sorcerer 1 - The Reluctant Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

that he was onto something that was liable to be very

10 тАв Simon Hawke

profitable in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime,
they had obtained exclusive offshore drilling rights.

What made this substance special was that if it was
started spinning on the inside of the tube, with magnetic
coils preventing it from contacting the sides, somewhat like
in a cyclotron, theory had it that if the Buckyballs went fast
enough, at the speed approaching that of light, it would
create a warp in space/time. And whatever was inside the
field would drop through.

To where? Good question. This was what Brewster in-
tended to find out. You see, he had done this before. A
couple of times, in fact. The first time traveler in history
was a lop-eared rabbit Brewster had purchased in a pet shop
and named Bugs. (What else?) The experiment that Brewster
had set up went something like this:

(Actually, it went exactly like this, but it's complicated,
so pay close attention.) He placed Bugs inside a cage and
then he placed the cage inside the time machine, which he
then programmed to travel back in time ten minutes for ten
seconds. Before he did this, he used a forklift (which he'd
needed for the Buckyballs, remember?) to move the time
machine about fifteen feet to one side, so that when it
appeared ten minutes in the past, it would not appear on the
exact same spot where it had been sitting earlier. (Confus-
ing? Wait. It gets worse.)

Theoretically (that is, assuming it all worked), Brewster
should have wound up with two time machines sitting side
by side, about fifteen feet apart. Now, this might seem like
something of a paradox, since if he sent the machine back
ten minutes into the past, then it should have made the
journey and appeared ten minutes before it had ever left.
Which meant that there would be two time machines and
two lop-eared rabbits named Bugs sitting on the floor of

The Reluctant Sorcerer тАв 11

Brewster's laboratory ten minutes before he'd ever sent the
first one back.

But... wait a minute. That doesn't make sense. (At least,
not logically, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with temporal physics, but let's not get into that right now,