"C M Kornbluth - The Little Black Bag" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

but you got to hand it to him. There this poor little dope is, puttering around with some glassware, and I
come up and ask him, kidding of course, 'How's about a time-travel machine, Mike?'

Dr. Gillis was not aware of it, but "Mike" had an I.Q. six times his own and was-to be blunt-his keeper.
"Mike" rode herd on the pseudo-physicists in the pseudo-laboratory, in the guise of a bottle-washer. It
was a social waste-but as has been mentioned before, the supernormals were still standing at the
approaches to a bridge. Their irresolution led to many such preposterous situations. And it happens that
"Mike," having grown frantically bored with his task, was malevolent enough to-but let Dr. Gillis tell it:

"So he gives me these here tube numbers and says, 'Series circuit. Now stop bothering me. Build your
time machine, sit down at it and turn on the switch. That's all I ask, Dr. Gillis-that's all I ask.'

"Say," marveled a brittle and lovely blond guest, "you remember real good, don't you, doc?" She gave
him a melting smile.

"Heck," said Gillis modestly, "I always remember good. It's what you call an inherent facility. And
besides I told it quick to my secretary, so she wrote it down. I don't read so good, but I sure remember
good, all right. Now, where was I?"
Everybody thought hard, and there were various suggestions:

"Something about bottles, doc?"

"You was starting a fight. You said 'time somebody was traveling.'

"Yeah-you called somebody a swish. Who did you call a swish?"

"Not swish-switch!"

Dr. Gillis' noble brow grooved with thought, and he declared: "Switch is right. It was about time travel.
What we call travel through time. So I took the tube numbers he gave me and I put them into the
circuit-builder; I set it for 'series' and there it is-my time-traveling machine. It travels things through time
real good." He displayed a box.




"What's in the box?" asked the lovely blonde.

Dr. Hemingway told her: "Time travel. It travels things through time."

"Look," said Gillis, the physicist. He took Dr. Hemingway's little black bag and put it on the box. He
turned on the switch and the little black bag vanished.

"Say," said Dr. Hemingway, "that was, uh, swell. Now bring it back."

"Huh?"

"Bring back my little black bag."

"Well," said Dr. Gillis, "they don't come back. I guess maybe that dummy Mike gave me a bum steer."