"Robert F. Young - Passage to Gomorrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"Yes?" she answered, when the knock sounded on the door.
"Your luggage, my lady."

She turned off the shower and wrapped the ship's towel she had selected earlier, around her body.
Then she crossed the room and opened the door.
His eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, but his lean face remained impassive. "Set them inside,
please," she said.
It was impossible for him to avoid touching her, and the contact, according to every-thing she had
been taught, should have precipitated the first advance. It did not. He withdrew hurriedly, keeping his
eyes averted.
"If you wish anything fur-ther, I'll be in my cabin," he said. He turned to go.
At first she was bewildered. Then, suddenly, she remembered that he was only a pilot, and that a
lady of the stars was probably as far beyond his aspirations as she was beyond his pocketbook.
Some of her recently acquired assurance left her. "Wait," she said.
"Yes?"
"HowтАФhow long will we be in A Priori?"
"A little over four hoursтАФship's time."
"IsтАФis there any likelihood of a time storm?"
"There's always a chance of a time storm," he said. "But don't worry, my lady. If the conditions for
one are present, we'll be contacted by the port authority in time to avoid it."
"But suppose something should go wrong. Suppose we weren't informed in time and did get involved
in one. What would happen then?"
He raised his eyes, finally, and looked directly into hers. An expression of surprise touched his face.
Presently: "As you may know, my lady," he said, "A Priori is merely the result of the separation of pure
space and pure time from the thing-in-itself, or from basic reality. Once sepa-rated, pure space can be
con-tracted to the extent where a parsec equals .59 kilometers. Usually pure time contracts accordingly,
but sometimes there is a slight discrepancy, certain phases of A Priori contain more time than space. If
we should become involved in one of these phasesтАФor storms, if you likeтАФwe would lose our
awareness of pure objective reality and proceed to relive a subjective and sporadic playback of our past.
So all that could happen to us, actually, are the things that have already happened to usтАФwith the
difference that we would relive not our own experiences, but one another's as well; in pure time,
individuality does not exist.
"But wouldn't our objective reality be affected?"
He nodded. "It could be," he said, "since, in the absence of any real passage of time, it would be in
temporal ratio to our involvement in our pasts, which might force it into a different time plane altogether."
She dropped her eyes. "ThenтАФthen in spite of what you said before, something could happen after
allтАФsomething that hasn't happened yet."
"I suppose so, my lady ... Will that be all?"
"Yes, for now."
"I'll be in my cabin ..."
After he had gone she closed the door but did not lock it, then she let the towel slip to the floor and
went over and lay down on the couch. He would be back, she knewтАФthere was no other answerтАФ and
when he returned she would welcome him the way she had welcomed all the othersтАФ
No, not quite the same, she thought, frowning. He was, after all, the father-to-be of her child-to-be,
herтАФher mon-ster-to-be. But, child or mon-ster, it wasтАФwould beтАФhis flesh and blood as well as hers,
and that, she realized sudden-ly, was something quite uniqueтАФand quite strangely wonderful.
She was disconcerted, at first, when the walls of the room began to shimmer, not because she had
doubted that there would be a time storm, but because she had expected him to be in her arms when it
broke. Then she remembered something else she had heard about time storms.
Like hurricanes, they had eyes. ...