"Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

Beyond the Barrier
by Damon Knight
Version 1.0
A #BW Release

Chapter One

The banked, fan-shaped classroom was silent with attention.

"And now," said Professor Gordon Naismith, "watch closely.
I drop the charged particle into the tank." He tripped the
release of the mechanism suspended over the big glass tank,
and saw a silvery spicule drop, almost too quickly to follow,
into the clear liquid.

"Contact with other partially charged molecules releases the
time energy," said Naismith, watching a sudden silvery cloud
spread from the bottom of the tank, "and, as you seeтАФ"

The silvery cloud grew rapidly, advancing on a wave front,
a beautifully symmetrical curve that was determined by two
factors: gravity, and the kinetic loss of the conversion process.
It was perfect beauty, far beyond any curve of flesh or any line
drawn by an artist, and Naismith watched it with a painful
tightness in his throat, although he had seen it a hundred times
before.

Now the change was complete. The tank was full of silvery
fluid, opaque, mirror-bright and luminous. "All the liquid has
now been raised to a higher temporal energy level," Naismith
told the class, "and is in the state you may have heard described
as 'quasi-matter.' Tomorrow, when we begin our experiments
on this tank, we will see that it has some very odd physical
properties. However, that concludes today's demonstration. Are
there any questions?"

A student signaled with his desk light. Naismith glanced at
the nameplate. "Yes, Hinkel?" He stood beside the table on the
dais, tall and big-framed in his laboratory smock, aware as he
answered the students' questions that eight other Naismiths, in
the other identical classrooms that radiated from a common
center, were also standing, like eight mirror images of himself,
also answering questions. It gave him an eerie shiver, just for a
moment, to realize that he himself was one of the doppel-
gangers, not the "real" NaismithтАФsomehow that was almost
impossible to accept, no matter how often one went through
the experience . . . then the moment passed, and he went on
talking, calm, self-assured, his voice controlled and resonant.

The tone sounded, and the students began to stir, gathering