"Murray Leinster - Time Tunnel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

was even reassuring for Pepe to have made that peculiar er-
ror about the history of his country. Of course the con-
sequences of changes in the present brought about by time-
travellers to the past would be horrifying to think about, if
time-travel were possible. But Harrison now saw that it was
wholly foolish. The evidence that had disturbed him wasn't
explained away. But since he'd told about it he was able
to be skeptical. Which was consoling.
Very, very thin and straight, a white pencil-line of vapor
moved across the sky. It was the contrail of a )et, flying so
high that even its roaring did not reach the ground. It was
probably a member of that precautionary patrol which
most of the larger cities of the earth maintained overhead
night and day. There was no particular diplomatic crisis in
the world at the moment-there were only two small brush-
fire wars smouldering in the Far East and one United Nations
force sitting on a trouble-spot nearer, with the usual turbu-
lences in Africa and South America. A jet patrol above
Paris did not mean that an unwarned atomic attack was more
** "These items are reported in reputable histories,
except the computer, which exists in an Athens museum
and which I heard about from someone working on it
from photographs, in the Princeton Institute for Ad-
vanced Studies. M.L.
likely than usual. But there was a jet patrol. There were also
atomic submarines under the Arctic ice-pack, ready to send
annihilation soaring toward predetermined targets in case
of need, and there were NATO ships at sea prepared to
launch other missiles, and there were cavernous missile bases
in divers countries, ready to send intercontinental rockets
beyond the atmosphere should the occasion require it.
But Harrison was used to hair-trigger preparations for
mutual suicide by the more modern countries of the world.
Such things didn't frighten him. They weren't new. Yet the
idea that history might be changed, so that a totally different
now might come about without warning, and that in that sub-
stituted present he might not even happen to have been born
. . . That was something to send cold tingles down his spine!
He was consciously glad that he'd talked it over with Pepe.
It was absurd! He was glad that he could see it as absurd!
A second contrail, miles high, made another white streak
across the sky. Harrison didn't notice.
"The shop I mentioned," said Pepe, "is just around the next
corner. I did not go into it, because I saw a woman inside
and she was stout and formidable and looked like a
shopkeeper. Truly practical shopkeepers should realize that
even reproductions of antiques should be sold by per-
sonable girls. But we will go there. We will inquire if they do
import from and export to another century. It will be in-
teresting. They will think us insane."