"Murray Leinster - A Logic Named Joe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

improper. All the intervening generations, of which I am the revered sire, would never exist. Out of
consideration for them I can't allow it. My regards to your father, by the way, Charles. And your
great-etc.-grandmother insists that I give you a message. She remembers you with an affection I cannot
match, and hopes that you meet some nice girl and marry her and live happily ever after. I'm afraid I
retain too much of my old antagonism toward Ginny's first suitor to wish you well.
In re the family business, though, Professor Hadley struck an enthusiastic attitude. He made a speech,
in which he said that his device would demonstrate the theoretically undemonstrable. Dramatically, he
flipped the switch over.
He was right about demonstrating the undemonstrable, all right! He didn't know his own genius or his
own gadget. When he flipped over the switch a spark leaped, tubes lighted, insulation smoked . . .
And Professor Hadley, beaming, turned a rather pretty luminous puce color, and with every
appearance of satisfaction faded quietly into thin air. Smiling happily and glowing like an off-color neon
sign, he vanished deliberately before our eyes.
We stared, our mouths open. We blinked. And after about three seconds there was a sharp,
somehow conclusive "snap," and the gadget burned itself out with enthusiastic thoroughness. It spat
sparks. Its insulation caught fire. It definitely ceased to work. And Professor Hadley remained among the
missing.
Your attention span is short, Charles, so I will not tell you of the disturbance caused by this event.
We five witnesses to his disappearance, of course, were flatly disbelieved. The police hinted darkly of a
multiple indictment for murder, but were stymied by the well-known rule of corpus delicti. Then they
looked into his papers and found he was corresponding with seventeen female members of Lonely
Hearts clubs. He had represented himself to them as a young and wealthy bachelor, and they were liars,
too. The police began to investigate them, announced that an arrest could be expected in the near future,
and the five of us were mysteriously clear of suspicion. But a diversion, about that time, helped to take
attention away from us, too. On Graduation Morning the Dean of Women was discovered atop the
statue of the University's Founder, celebrating the end of the academic year. She was standing on her
head on the Founder's bronze top hat, singing A Robin in the Merry Month of May in partsтАФno mean
feat for one womanтАФand she was wearing the Art Department's one prized Picasso neatly made over
into a leotard. This tended to draw public attention from Professor Hadley's less spectacular
disappearance.
I may say that the mystery has never been solved. Nobody ever found out where he went. I think it
possible, however, that his dentures may yet some day be found in some Upper Devonian fossil-bearing
stratum. I say this because, while he was trying to prove the Lorenz-Fitzgerald hypothesis on purpose, I
later found out that he had made a time-travel device by accident. And from my knowledge of Professor
Hadley, I am sure he would have had it set up to run backward.
Here I have anticipated myself. I should say that I graduated some two weeks after the Professor
disappeared, but with a commitment to jerk sodas during the summer session to pay up my senior-year
bills. I remained in the small university town. Toothy schoolteachers swarmed in to absorb culture and get
academic credits that would raise their pay if they didn't catch husbands. Time marched on.
Then Joe turned up. I call him Joe to spare him embarrassment. Joe was one of those scholastic
triumphs nobody remembers. He was embracing a teaching career; he was magnificently learned; he was
splendidly earnest. In his own way I am sure he was a perfectly swell guyтАФand nobody cared. He'd
been grabbed in a hurry to teach Professor Hadley's subjects to the bespectacled summer students, and
come fall he would be let go for somebody who knew less but counted more. It was too bad. I was
brutal to Joe myself, finally, butтАФ
Somebody told him what had happened to Professor Hadley. He thought it over. He came to me as
a known witness. He said thoughtfully that Professor Hadley was a very able man, and, if he had thought
he could prove the Lorenz-Fitzgerald theory, it was worth looking into. Would I help him reconstruct the
burned-out gimmick and see what the trouble was? If he could find out, he could write a paper about it,
and, if some scientific publication printed it, he might get a permanent instructorship. . . .