"Henry Kuttner - The Time Axis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"They made a recordтАФI can't deny that. They cast it adrift in time like a note in a bottle and it
floated ashore here and we read it. Sure. But it makes a good enough news-story for me the logical
wayтАФa relic of a dead civilization a million years old. That I could write. ButтАФ"

"You are not here to write a news story, sir!" De Kalb's

voice was sharp.

"That's what my contract says I'm here for."

"You were chosen," De Kalb said heavily. "You were chosen. Not by Allister. Not by me." He shifted
uneasily. "Let me go on a little." He peered at the orange, tossed it up and caught it with a
smack in his palm. "I opened the box for the first time," he said, "in my studio.

"You've seen it. I saw the box unfolding like a flower. For the first time in a million
yearsтАФopening up in four dimen-

sions, or perhaps more than four, with that tesseract motion which the eye can only partly see.
But that first time, sir-something more happened." He paused, hesitated, said in a reluctant
voice, "Something came out of the box."

I waited. Dr. Essen, who had scarcely moved since this talk began, got up abruptly and went to
stand at the window, her back to us, looking out over the great brown tumble of mountains beyond.

"It came out of the box," De Kalb said in a rapid voice, as if he didn't want to talk about this
and was determined to get it over as fast as he could. "It passed me. It leaped toward the
fireplace. And it was gone. When I looked, I saw nothing. But that evening I noticed the first
spot of the stain upon the stone. In the stone. It meant little to me thenтАФ I had not yet learned
enough from the Record to be afraid. But I know now."

IV

THE LAURENTIAN STORY

AGAIN I waited. This time I had to prompt him.

"Knowwhat?"

"The nekron," he said. "It's growing. It will never stop growing, untilтАФ" He paused, shrugged. "We
have to believe they're in the future," he said. "We have to help them. They made sure of that.
For unless we do the nekron will grow and grow until our world is like theirsтАФdead matter. Inert.
Nekronic. I call it that because it is death.

"An absolutely new form of matter, the death of energy. It breaks a supreme law of our universe,
the law of increasing entropy. Entropy trends toward chaos, naturally. But the nekron is the other
extreme, a pattern, a dead null-energy pattern of negation."

"You mean," I demanded, "that the people of the City deliberately set a trap for the man who first
opened the box?"