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

Since the beginning is in the past, before men as such existed at all, the only starting place I
know is a temporal and personal one, when I was drawn into the experiment. Now that I know a
little more about the nature of time it seems clearer to me that past, present and future were all
stepping stones, arranged out of sequence. The first step took place two months ago.

That was here in this time and space. Or in the time and space that existed two months ago.
There's been a change

Now this is the way it used to be.

For me, the Big Ride. You start when you're born. You climb on the toboggan and then you're off.
But you can only have the one ride. No use telling the ticket-taker you want to go again. They
shovel you under at the end of the slope and there's a new lot of passengers waiting. You've had
your three-score and ten. And it's over.



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I'd ridden the toboggan for thirty-five years. Jeremy Cort-land, Jerry Cortland of the Denver
Post, the Frisco Call-

Bulletin, PM, AP, Time, CoHzers-sometimes staff, sometimes roving assignments. I leaned out of the
toboggan and plucked fruit from the orchards as I sped by. Strange fruit, sometimes. Generic term
is News. And that covers a lot of territory.

There was a splinter in the toboggan's seat. I had on red flannel underwear. I had a nervous tic.
I couldn't sit still. I kept reaching out, grabbing. Years of it, of by-lines that said "cabled by
Jeremy Cortland."

Russia, China, war coverage, Piccard's bathyscaphe, the supersonic and altostratosphere planes,
the Russian earth-borer gadget, the Big Eye at PalomarтАФthe coal strikes and the cracker lynchings
and that dirt farmer in North Dakota who suddenly began to work miracles. (His patients didn't
stay cured, you remember, and he disappeared.)

The Big Ride. In between I grabbed at other things. One marriage, one divorce, and more and more
bulges. Long bouts, between assignments. I didn't give aтАФwell, you can't use that word in some
papers. But it was all right. What did I expect, heaven?

The eyes aren't quite as clear as they used to be. The skin under them is a little puffy. One chin
begins to be not quite enough. But it's still the Big Ride. With a splinter in the seat.

Dodging alimony payments, I skipped to Brazil, got in on a submarine exploration of the Amazon,
wrote it up, sold it to AP as a feature. The first installment appeared on the same day as another
little itemтАФburied in the backтАФthat said 85 and 87 had been made artificially.

Astatine and franciumтАФthe missing link in the periodic tableтАФtwo billion years ago you could have
picked up all the astatine and francium you wanted, just by reaching down and grabbing. If you'd