"C. L. Moore - Tryst In Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

passed. But they were to know one another much more intimately than that
before the true urgency of what lay in the minds of each became clear to the
other.
Walter Dow had spent a lifetime in the worship of one god-inertia. "There is a
bedrock," he used to say reverently, "over which the tides of time ebb and
flow, over which all things material and immaterial, as the layman sees them,
change and fade and form again. But the bedrock remains. Complete inertia!
What couldn't we do if we attained it!"
"And what," asked Eric, "is inertia?"
Dow shot him a despairing glance.
"Everybody knows what inertia is. Newton's first law of motion is the law of
inertia, stating that every body remains in a state of rest or of uniform
motion in a straight line unless impressed forces change it. That's what makes
people in a moving car swerve to one side when the car goes round a bend. It's
what makes it so difficult for a horse to start a heavy load moving, though
once it's in motion the strain eases. There's nothing that doesn't obey the
law-nothing!
"But Newton didn't dream what measureless abysses of force lay behind his
simple statement. Or what an understatement it was. Describing inertia by
stating Newton's law is like describing the sea
by saying there's foam on the waves. The inertia force is inherent in
everything, just as there's moisture in everything. But behind that inertia,
manifest so obscurely in matter, is a vastness of power much greater
comparatively than the vastnesses of the seas which are the storehouses for
the relatively tiny amounts of moisture in everything you see.
"I can't make you understand; you don't speak the language. And I sometimes
wonder if I could explain even to another physicist all that I've discovered
in the past ten years. But I do very firmly believe that it would be possible
to anchor to that bedrock of essential, underlying inertia which is the base
upon which matter builds and-and allow time itself to whirl by!"
"Yeah, and find yourself floating in space when you let go." Eric grinned.
"Even I've heard that the universe is in motion through space. I don't know
about time, but I'm pretty sure space would block your little scheme."
"I didn't mean you'd have to-to dig your anchor right into the rock,"
explained Dow with dignity. "It'd be a sort of a drag to slow you down, not a
jerk that would snatch you right off the Earth. And it'd
involve-immensities-even then. But it could be done. It will be done. By
Heaven, I'll do it!"
Eric's sunburned face sobered.
"You're not kidding?" he asked. "A man could-coj~dd drag his anchor and let
time go by, and 'up-anchor' in another age? Say! Make me an anchor, and I'll
be your guinea pig!"
Dow did not smile.
"That's the worst of it," he said. "All this is pure theory and will have to
remain that, in spite of all I've bragged. It would be absolutely blind
experimenting, and the very nature of the element I'm experimenting with
precludes any proof of success or failure. I could-to be frank with you I
have-sent objects out through time--"
"You have!" Eric leaned forward with a jerk and laid an urgent hand on Dow's
arm. "You really have?"