"Harry Harrison - SSR 03 - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The " - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Someone clutched at my shoulder, but I brushed him aside, grabbed the door and
flung it open.
There was nothing outside. A formless, colorless nothing that did strange
things to my brain when I looked at it. Then the door was pulled from my hand
and slammed shut, and Coypu stood with his back to it, breathing heavily, his
features twisted by the same unnamable sensations I had felt.
"Gone," he said hoarsely. "The corridor, the entire station, all the
buildings, everything. Gone. Just this laboratory left, locked here by the
time-fixator. The Special Corps no longer exists; no one in the galaxy has
even a memory of us. When the time-fixator goes we go as well."
"Angelina, where is she, where are they all?"
"They were never born, never existed."
"But I can remember her, all of them."
"That is what we count upon. As long as there is one person alive with
memories of us, of the Corps, we stand a microscopic chance of eventual
survival. Someone must stop the time attack. If not for the Corps, for the
sake of civilization. History is now being rewritten. But not forever if we
can counterattack."
A one-way trip backward to a lifetime on an alien world, in an alien time.
Whoever went would be the loneliest man alive, living thousands of years
before his people, his friends, would even be born.
"Get ready." I said. "I'll go."

Chapter 2

"First we must find out where you are going. And when."
Professor Coypu staggered across the laboratory, and I followed, in almost
as bad shape. He was mumbling over the accordion sheets of the computer
printout that were chuntering and pouring out of the machine and piling up on
the flow.
"Must be accurate, very accurate," he said. "We have been running a time
probe backward. Following the traces of these disturbances. We have found the
particular planet. Now we must zero in on the time. If you arrive too late,
they may have already finished their job. Too early and you might die of old
age before the fiends are even born."
"Sounds charming. What is the planet?"
"Strange name. Or rather names. It is called Dirt or Earth or something
like that. Supposed to be the legendary home of all mankind."
"Another one? I never heard of it."
"No reason you should. Blown up in an atomic war ages ago. Here it is. You
have to be pushed backward thirty-two thousand five hundred and ninety-eight
years. We can't guarantee anything better than a plus or minus three months at
that distance."
"I don't think I'll notice. What year will that be?"
"Well before our present calendar began. It is, I believe, A.D. 1975 by
the primitive records of the aborigines of the time."
"Not so aboriginal if they're fiddling with time travel."
"Probably not them at all. Chances are the people you are looking for are
just operating in that period."
"How do I find them?"