"Robert F. Young - The Worlds of Robert F. Young" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

it lookx xomething like a xilo. People never notixe an obvious object, even if itтАЩx right under their noxex,
xo long ax it blends in with its xurroundings."
"A silo?'
'Yex. AтАФa silo. I see I've been getting my 'X's' mixed up with my 'S's' again. You see," she went on,
pronouncing each word carefully, "in the Buzenborg alphabet the nearest sound to the 'S' sound is the 'X'
sound, so if I don't watch myself, whenever I say 'S' it comes out 'X,' unless it is followed or preceded by
a letter that softens its sibilance.тАЭ
Roger looked at her closely. But her blue eyes were disarming, and not so much as a smidgin of a
smile disturbed the serene line of her lips. He decided to humor her. "What you need is a good diction
teacher," he said.
She nodded solemnly. "But how do I go about getting one?тАЭ
"The phone directory is full of them. Just call one up and make an appointment." Probably, he thought
cynically, if he had met her before Becky swam into his ken he would have thought her accent charming
and have advised her not to go to a diction teacher. "But lees get back to what we were talking about,"
he went on. "You say you left your ship in plain sight because people never notice an obvious object so
long as it doesn't clash with its surroundings, which means that you want to keep your presence on Earth
a secret. Right?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Then why," Roger pounced, "are you sitting here in broad daylight practically throwing the secret in
my face?тАЭ
"Because the law of obviousness works with people too. The surest way to make everybody believe
I'm not from Altair VI is to keep saying that I am."
"O.K., we'll let that pass." Eagerly Roger launched Phase Two of his campaign. "Let's consider your
trip instead."
Inwardly he gloated. He was sure he had her now. However, as matters turned out, he didn't have
her at all, for in drawing up his plans to lure her into deeper and deeper water he had overlooked a very
pertinent possibilityтАФthe possibility that she might be able to swim. And not only could she swim, she
was even more at home in the scientific sea than he was.
For instance, when he pointed out that, owing to the ratio between the mass and the velocity of a
moving body, the speed of light cannot be equaled and that therefore her journey from Altair VI to Earth
must have required more than the sixteen years needed by light to travel the same distance, she said,
"You're not taking the Lorentz transformation into consideration. Moving clocks slow down with
reference to stationary clocks, so if I traveled at just under the velocity of light my journey wouldn't have
lasted over a few hours."
For instance, when he pointed out that more than sixteen years would still have gone by on Altair VI,
and that her family and friends would be that much older, she said, "Yes, but you're only assuming that
the speed of light can't be equaled. As a matter of fact, it can be doubled, tripled and quadrupled. True,
the mass of a moving body increases in proportion to its velocity, but not when a demassifierтАФa device
invented by our scientists to cancel out massтАФis used."
For instance, when he conceded for the sake of argument that the velocity of light could be exceeded
and pointed out that if she had traveled a little in excess of twice its velocity she not only would have
traveled backward in time but would have finished her journey before she began it, thereby giving birth to
a rather awkward paradox, she said, "There wouldn't be a paradox because the minute one became
imminent a cosmic time shift would cancel it. Anyway, we don't use faster-than-light drives any more. We
used to, and our ships are still equipped with them, but we aren't supposed to resort to them except in
cases of emergency because too many time shifts occurring simultaneously could disrupt the space-time
continuum."
And for instance, when he demanded how she had made her trip then, she said, "I took the short cut,
the same as anyone else on Altair VI does when he wishes to travel vast distances. Space is warped, just
as your own scientists have theorized, and with the new warp drive our Altairian VI scientists have