"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автораProgram of Officer's Candidate School and was cramming for his mathematics
and mechanics courses. The diagrams and formulas used in their elementary ballistics studies puzzled Maxim. He nagged Guy. At first Guy did not understand what he was driving at. Then, grinning condescendingly, he explained to Maxim the cosmography of his world. It turned out that the inhabited island was neither a sphere nor a geoid; in fact, it wasn't a planet at all. According to Guy, the inhabited island was the World, the only world in the universe. Beneath the natives' feet lay the firm surface of the World Sphere. Above them was a gigantic gaseous sphere of finite volume and unknown composition, whose physical characteristics were still not understood. There was a theory that the density of this gas increased rapidly toward the center of the gaseous bubble and certain mysterious processes produced periodic changes in the intensity of the World Light, thus giving day and night. Besides the short-term daily changes in the World Light, there were long-term changes that generated seasonal fluctuations in temperature and the seasons themselves. Gravity acted away from the center of the World Sphere, perpendicular to its surface. In short, the inhabited island was located on the inner surface of an enormous bubble in an infinite firmament filling the rest of the universe. Completely stunned, Maxim began to argue, but it soon became quite apparent that they did not speak the same language, that it was more difficult for them to understand each other's thinking than for a staunch Copernican to understand a follower of Ptolemy. Maxim believed that the unusual characteristics of this planet's atmosphere were the key to the the horizon and from time immemorial had inspired the natives' peculiar conception of their land as being neither flat nor convex but concave. "Stand on the seashore," suggested schoolbooks, "and follow the path of a ship leaving a pier. At first it will appear to be moving on a plane, but the further it goes, the higher it will rise, until it vanishes in the atmospheric haze covering the rest of the World." In the second place, the atmosphere was very dense and phosphoresced day and night, so that no one ever saw the stars. Isolated instances of observation of the sun were recorded in chronicles and served as the basis for countless attempts to create a World Light theory. Maxim realized that he was caught in a gigantic trap, that contact with Earth could not be established until he succeeded in turning inside out the natural concepts that had developed over thousands of years. Evidently, attempts had been made to do this, judging from the popular expletive "massaraksh," which meant, literally, "world inside out." Guy had told him about an abstract mathematical theory that analyzed the World differently. The theory was formulated in ancient times, but its adherents had been persecuted by the official religion, and it had its martyrs. Through the efforts of certain brilliant mathematicians of the last century, the theory was expressed in exact mathematical form. But it had remained a purely abstract theory, although, finally, like most abstract theories, it found practical application - very recently, when super-long-distance military weapons were developed. After weighing all the information he now had about their planet, Maxim |
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