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

you, and I met her the same as I did youтАФon the very bench we're sitting on now. So if you're telling the
truth you really don't have a problem at all. All you have to do is make a round trip to Altair VI enough in
excess of the velocity of light to bring you back to Earth twenty-four hours before your original arrival.
Then you simply come walking down the walk to where IтАЩm sitting on the bench, and if your wodget is
worth a plugged nickel I'll feel the same way toward you as you feel toward me."
 "But that would involve a paradox, and the cosmos would have to create a time shift to compensate
for it," Alayne of Altair objected. "The millisecond I attained the necessary velocity and the extent of the
paradox became evident, time would go whom! And you, I and everybody else in the cosmos would be
catapulted back to the moment when the paradox began, and we'd have no memory of the last few days.
It would be as though I'd never met you, as though you'd never met meтАФ"
"And as though I'd never met Becky. What more do you want?"
She was staring at him. "WhyтАФwhy, it just might work at that. ItтАФit would be sort of like Aparicio
stealing first base. Let me see now, if I take a bus out to the farm, Ill get there in less than an hour. Then if
I set the grodgel for Lapse Two, and the borque forтАФ"
"Oh, for Pete's sake," Roger said, "come off it, will you!"
"Sh-sh!" Alayne of Altair said. "I'm trying to think."
He stood up. "Well, think then! I'm going back to my room and get ready for my date with Becky!"
Angrily he walked away. In his room, he laid his best suit out on the bed. He shaved and showered
leisurely and spent a long time getting dressed. Then he went out, rented a car and drove to Becky's
apartment. It was 2:00 P.M. on the nose when he rang her bell. She must have been taking a shower,
because when she opened the door all she had on was a terry-cloth towel and three anklets. No, four.
"Hi, Roger," she said warmly. "Come on in."
Eagerly he stepped across the threshold and made aтАФ
Whoom! Time went.

Little did Roger Thompson dream when he sat down on the park bench that Friday morning in June
that in a celibate sense his goose was already in the oven and that soon it would be cooked. He may
have had an inkling of things to come when he saw the cute blonde in the blue dress walking down the
winding walk some several seconds later, but that inkling could not conceivably have apprised him of the
vast convolutions of time and space which the bowing out of his bachelorhood had already set in motion.
The cute blonde sat down at the other end of the bench, produced a little red notebook and began
writing in it. Presently she glanced at her wrist watch. Then she gave a start and looked over at him.
He returned the look cordially. He saw a dusting of golden freckles, a pair of eyes the hue of
bluebirds and a small mouth the color of sumac leaves after the first hard frost.
A tall brunette in a red sheath came down the walk. Roger hardly even noticed her. Just as she was
opposite the bench one of her spike heels sank into a crevice and brought her to an abrupt halt. She
slipped her foot out of the shoe and, kneeling down, jerked the shoe free with her hands. Then she put it
back on, gave him a dirty look and continued on her way.
The cute blonde had returned her attention to her note book. Now she faced him again. Roger's
heart turned three somersaults and made an entrechat.
"How do you xpell matrimony?" she said.


ADDED INDUCEMENT
THE ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE STORE was one of many that had sprung up in and around the
city, seemingly overnight. There were half a dozen TV sets in the window, marked at amazingly low
prices, and a window-wide sign boasted;
WE'RE PRACTICALLY giving THEM AWAY! "This is the place we've been looking for," Janice
said, and she pulled Henry though the entrance and into the store proper.
They hadn't gone two steps beyond the entrance when they came to a common standstill. Before