"H. Beam Piper - Flight from Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

to look; he had emerged into normal time in the year 10 of the Atomic Era, a decade after the first
uranium-pile had gone into operation, and seven years after the first atomic bombs had been exploded in
warfare. The altimeter showed that he was hovering at eight thousand feet above ground-level.

Slowly, he cut out the antigrav, letting the "time machine" down easily. He knew that there had been no
danger of materializing inside anything; the New Tower had been built to put it above anything that had
occupied that space-point at any moment within history, or legend, or even the geological knowledge of
man. What lay below, however, was uncertain. It was nightтАФthe visi-screen showed only a star-dusted,
moonless-sky, and dark shadows below. He snapped another switch; for a few micro-seconds a beam
of intense light was turned on, automatically photographing the landscape under him. A second later, the
developed picture was projected upon another screen; it showed only wooded mountains and a barren,
brush-grown valley.




The "time-machine" came to rest with a soft jar and a crashing of broken bushes that was audible
through the sound pickup. Hradzka pulled the main switch; there was a click as the shielding went out
and the door opened. A breath of cool night air drew into the hollow sphere.

Then there was a loud bang inside the mechanism, and a flash of blue-white light which turned to pinkish
flame with a nasty crackling. Curls of smoke began to rise from the square black box that housed the
"time-shift" mechanism, and from behind the instrument-board. In a moment, everything was glowing-hot:
driblets of aluminum and silver were running down from the instruments. Then the whole interior of the
"time-machine" was afire; there was barely time for Hradzka to leap through the open door.

The brush outside impeded him, and he used his blaster to clear a path for himself away from the big
sphere, which was now glowing faintly on the outside. The heat grew in intensity, and the brush outside
was taking fire. It was not until he had gotten two hundred yards from the machine that he stopped,
realizing what had happened.

The machine, of course, had been sabotaged. That would have been young Zoldy, whom he had killed,
or that old billy-goat, Kradzy Zago; the latter, most likely. He cursed both of them for having marooned
him in this savage age, at the very beginning of atomic civilization, with all his printed and recorded
knowledge destroyed. Oh, he could still gain mastery over these barbarians; he knew enough to fashion a
crude blaster, or a heat-beam gun, or an atomic-electric conversion unit. But without his books and
records, he could never build an antigrav unit, and the secret of the "temporal shift" was lost.

For "Time" is not an object, or a medium which can be travelled along. The "Time-Machine" was not a
vehicle; it was a mechanical process of displacement within the space-time continuum, and those who
constructed it knew that it could not be used with the sort of accuracy that the dials indicated. Hradzka
had ordered his scientists to produce a "Time Machine", and they had combined the
possibleтАФdisplacement within the space-time continuumтАФwith the sort of fiction the dictator demanded,
for their own well-being. Even had there been no sabotage, his return to his own "time" was nearly of
zero probability.

The fire, spreading from the "time-machine", was blowing toward him; he observed the wind-direction
and hurried around out of the path of the flames. The light enabled him to pick his way through the brush,
and, after crossing a small stream, he found a rutted road and followed it up the mountainside until he
came to a place where he could rest concealed until morning.