"Andrew J. Offutt - Gone With the Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

Ben was obviously deep in thought about something else. At last he said, "But how is it that we can
travel in time without covering enormous astronomical distances as well?"
Mark stared at him, frowning.
 "Uh ... we've proven that we're all tied up with e=mc2," I said. "So ... we do cover enormous
astronomical distances. At faster-than-light speed."
Mark stared at me, frowning.
Ben made a helpless, somewhat anguished gesture with his hands. "PerhapsтАФbut if we've discovered
FTL, it isn't taking us anywhere. We stayтАФor return toтАФEarth. Look, Harve . . . our Sun is moving
alongтАФand dragging the Earth with itтАФat something like two hundred kilometers a second."
I nodded. "OK. A little over four Astronomical Units a year."
Mark stared at us, frowning.
"That's right," Ben said. "Four-point-two AU's, to be a bit more precise. So. Using a rough value of a
hundred million kilometers for the AU ... in, ah, say ten thousand years we've traveled nearly a
light-year!"
I thought about that. "Meaning . . . if we go back ten thousand years, why the hell weren't we some
four-point-two times, ah times . . ."
". . . times ten to the twelfth," Ben supplied.
Mark stared at him, frowning. "OK," I said, nodding. "But we weren't. So . . ."
"So we don't know all there is to know about what we're doing," Ben said quietly, and not without
sadness. "So we're engineers, not scientists. We're doing it, but we don't know how and why!"
"Maybe, uh, gravity," I said, knowing how lame that was. But at least it was a comfortable scientific
word. There's security in labels; so long as we can tack a scientific-sounding tag on it, we feel a lot
better. Awhile back it was witchcraft. Now it's science. Come to think, both witchcraft and scientific
problems tend to yield to the same sort of solution: a lot of Latin words.
Mark frowned at Ben, staring. "What are you two chattering about?"
"Mark," I began slowly, "you just went back into time a long, long way. Since the Sun and therefore
the Earth are moving, all the time, we figure you shouldn't have, ah, 'landed' on Earth at all. You should
have wound up somewhere like 4.2 X 10 12 kilometers away from the Sun's position."
"My God," Mark said, staring and frowning.
Ben nodded. "Uh-huh. Is that what Abraham said?"

Maybe that was what gave Ventnor his Idea. Certainly he could have become rich merely by
journeying relatively short distances into the past and bringing forward more comic books, postage
stamps, or silver dollars. Or betting on derbies, fights, and ball games. But that wasn't how he chose to
make his mark. And what Mark chose to do was it. As noted, Ben Corrick did tend to overlook little
things. Such as the fact that the temporal traverser was no longer his, but the property of Transtempus,
Inc., seventy-three percent of the stock of which was owned by Marcus D. Ventnor. And Mrs.
Ventnor.
Mark Ventnor overlooks damned little.
First we added the heavy-duty cables and huge sled-like runners to the veedub, making it resemble a
bright yellow forklift with pinache. That way, timejumping, it would be able to transport about anything.
Then we liberated the new device that Westinghouse developed for NASA, to use in space; an
electron beam generator or "gun." It was unfortunately too expensive to buy, but judicious use of the
temporal traverser solved that problem. It is a great mystery, how the e-beam generator, Mark Two,
just vanished one fine night . . . and was back in place by the time the watchman came arunning with the
two superiors he'd run for.
How does something vanish for ten or so seconds, then reappear? And particularly when I tell you
that I used it, in this time period and that, this place and that, for several months?
Right!
We also equipped the veedub with a thermal drill, a truly marvelous invention.