"Andre Norton - Operation timesearch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

up a pencil, turned it end to end on the pad before him, but
made no markings. "Not in this world-"

"Where then? On Mars-? They blew themselves up, I
suppose, and left that pocking of desert craters-"

"Oddly enough, according to legend the Atlanteans did
eventually blow themselves up, or the equivalent. No, right
here on this planet. You have heard of the alternate history
theory-that from each major historical decision two
alternate worlds come into being."

"Fantastic-" Hargreaves interrupted.



file:///F|/rah/Andre%20Norton/Norton,%20Andre%20-%20Operation%20Time%20Search.txt (1 of 153) [1/17/03 1:19:43 AM]
 file:///F|/rah/Andre%20Norton/Norton,%20Andre%20-%20Operation%20Time%20Search.txt

"Is it? Suppose that it is fact, that on one of those alternate
time lines Atlantis did exist, just as on another dragons
overlapped mankind."

"Even if that were so, how would we know about it?"

"True. We could be separated from those lines by whole
networks of major choices and decisions. Yet, suppose
when we were close together, there was a kind of seepage-
perhaps individuals even crossed. We have well-
authenticated stories of strange and unexplainable
disappearances from our own world, and one or two odd
people have turned up here under very peculiar
circumstances. And Atlantis is so vivid a story, has so seized
upon the imagination of generations, that we used it for our
checkpoint."

"Just how?"

"We fed-into the Ibby every known scrap of material on
the subject that is known by the modern worldfrom the
reports of geologists sounding the sea bottoms for possible
ridges of a sunken continent to `revelations' of cultists. And
Ibby gave us an equation in return."

"You mean you set up the probe-beam on that?"

"Exactly. And you have seen the resulting test films. Those
came from Ibby's calculations. And you'll admit they bear
no resemblance to the here and now."