"Robert A. Heinlein - The Man who sold the Moon (collected sto" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

about it?"
A few minutes later they were trying to find places to sit down in
Pinero's messy bed-living-room, and lighting his cigars. Pinero looked around
and beamed. "What'll it be, boys? Scotch, or Bourbon?" When that was taken
care of he got down to business. "Now, boys, what do you want to know?"
"Lay it on the line, doe. Have you got something, or haven't you?"
"Most assuredly I have something, my young friend."
"Then tell us how it works. That guff you handed the profs won't get you
anywhere now."
"Please, my dear fellow. it is my invention. I expect to make some
money with it. Would you have me give it away to the first person who asks
for it?"
"See here, doe, you've got to give us something if you expect to get a
break in the morning papers. What do you use? A crystal ball?"
"No, not quite. Would you like to see my apparatus?"
"Sure. Now we are getting somewhere."
He ushered them into an adjoining room, and waved his hand. "There it
is, boys." The mass of equipment that met their eyes vaguely resembled a
medico's office x-ray gear. Beyond the obvious fact that it used electrical
power, and that some of the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a casual
inspection gave no clue to its actual use.
"What's the principle, doe?"
Pinero pursed his lips and considered. "No doubt you are all familiar
with the truism that life is electrical in nature? Well, that truism isn't worth a
damn, but it will help to give you an idea of the principle. You have also been
told that time is a fourth dimension. Maybe you believe it, perhaps not. It has
been said so many times that it has ceased to have any meaning. It is simply
a clich├й that windbags use to impress fools. But I want you to try to visualize
it now and try to feel it emotionally."
4
 He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Suppose we, take you as an
example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-
time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are
about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there
stretches behind you more of this space-time event reaching to perhaps
nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a cross-section here at right angles to the
time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of
sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps,
an old man someplace in the nineteen-eighties. Imagine this space-time
event which we call Rogers as a long pink worm, continuous through the
years, one end at his mother's womb, the other at the grave. It stretches past
us here and the cross-section we see appears as a single discrete body. But
that is illusion. There is physical continuity to this pink worm, enduring
through the years. As a matter of fact there is physical continuity in, this
concept to the entire race, for these pink worms branch off from other pink
worms. In this fashion the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and
send Out shoots. Only by taking a cross-section of the vine would we fall into
the error of believing that the shootlets were discrete individuals."
He paused and looked around at their faces. One of them, a dour hard-
bitten chap, put in a word.