"H.H. Hollis - Sword Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hollis H. H)

carnival once, when I ran away before. I know how to dodge
swords in a sword basket. Could you be an East Indian sword
magician? We could pick up a show somewhere and travel
right along with them."
"By God," cried the topologist, "I can do better than that!
It's been a long time since I did any engineering work, but I
have a little laboratory curiosity that will just fill the bill.
Come with me to the animal house in the basement of the
Psychology Department, and I'll show you something you
won't believe."
"Try me, baby," replied his inamorata. "You'd be surprised
at what / can believe."
They repaired to the noisome cages in which the experi-
mental animals were kept, and the professor secured a sturdy
mouse. Selecting a few strips of clear plastic from a rack, he
lit a burner and uncorked a container of plastic adhesive. In
a few minutes, the topologist had cobbled up a container
which defied the eye to define its exact shape, but which most
often seemed to be a lumpy cylinder. In a trice, he thrust the
mouse in and clapped the square top down. The mouse could
be seen through the plastic, but he seemed to be in a single
fixed position, floating in midair with his paws and tail
extended just as when he was inserted.
Heating a pointed rod, the professor pierced a hole first in
one side of the bulgy cylinder and then in the other. In a
moment, when the long pin had cooled, he introduced its
sharp point 'through the hole again, and having located the
mouse properly, skewered the rodent through the heart so
that the point of the sharpened rod came out the second hole.
Swinging the cylinder over the girl's hand with a little shake,
the professor deposited a tiny drop of bright arterial mouse
blood on her wrist.
As she looked at the crimson drop, tears appeared,
sparkling on her eyelids. "Big deal, big man," she said.
"Mouse murder. I don't think a wild mouse would walk into
that plastic pipe, do you?"
"Heart of my heart," he replied, "it's not a pipe. It isn't
even a cylinder, and it certainly isn't a mousetrap. This is a
tesseract, as you would know if you had ever read a popular
work on topology."
"Oh, all right, I know what a tesseract is: an expanded
cube, a cube with a cube on each face. That mouse cage
doesn't look like six cubes surrounding a cube to me."
"No, otherwise our mouse would be dead all over. This is
a tesseract which is a temporal illusion."
"A temporal illusion!"
"Yes, my dear," he said, "a temporal illusion. Topology
teaches us that mathematical properties can be quite indepen-
dent of apparent shape. A circle is still a circle, even though
it looks like a scalloped pie crustas it may, if it is drawn