"Jack Williamson - Hindsight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

on her knees to support pen and paper. Her dark eyes were staring away across the
campus, and her sunbrown face looked tense and troubled.
In the huge dim room aboard the wrecked warship, a gong throbbed softly. A
red arrow flamed in the cube, pointing down at the note on the girl's knee. Cryptic
symbols flashed above it. And Brek realized that the humming of the
achronintegrators had stopped.
"What's this?" rasped the anxious Astrarch. "A schoolgirl writing a notewhat has
she to do with a space battle?"
Brek scanned the fiery symbols. "She was deciding the battlethat day twenty
years ago!" His voice rang with elation. "You see, she had a date to go dancing in
Toran with Tony Grimm that night. But her father was giving a special lecture on the
new theories of achronic force. Tony broke the date, to attend the lecture."
As Brek watched the motionless image in the cube, his voice turned a little
husky. "Elora was angrythat was before she knew Tony very well. I had asked her
for a date. And, at the moment you see, she has just written a note, to say that she
would go dancing with me."
Brek gulped. "But she is undecided, you see. Because she loves Tony. A very
little would make her tear up the note to me, and write another to Tony, to say that
she would go to the lecture with him."
The Astrarch stared cadaverously. "But how could that decide the battle?"
"In the past that we have lived," Brek told him, "Elora sent the note to me. I went
dancing with her, and missed the lecture. Tony attended itand got the germ idea that
finally caused his autosight to be better than mine.
"But, if she had written to Tony instead, he would have offered, out of
contrition, to cut the lectureso the analyzers indicate. I should have attended the
lecture in Tony's place, and my autosight would have been superior in the end."
The Astrarch's waxen head nodded slowly. "Butcan you really change the past?"
Brek paused for a moment, solemnly. "We have all the power of the ship's
converters," he said at last. "We have the highfrequency achronic field, as a lever
through which to apply it. Surely, with the millions of kilowatts to spend, we can
stimulate a few cells in a schoolgirl's brain. We shall see."
His long, pale fingers moved swiftly over the control keys. At last, deliberately,
he touched a green button. The converters whispered again through the silent ship.
The achronintegrators whirred again. Beyond, giant transformers began to whine.
And that still tableau came to sudden life.
Elora Ronee tore up the note that began, "Dear Bill" Brek and the Astrarch
leaned forward, as her trembling fingers swiftly wrote: "Dear TonyI'm so sorry that I
was angry. May I come with you to father's lecture? Tonight"
The image faded. "Minus four"
The metallic rasp of the speaker brought Brek Veronar to himself with a start.
Could he have been dozingwith contact just four minutes away? He shook himself.
He had a queer, unpleasant feelingas if he had forgotten a nightmare dream in which
the battle was fought and lost.
He rubbed his eyes, scanned the control board. The autosight was set, the
pickups were tuned, the director relays tested. His part was done. He tried to relax
the puzzling tension in him.
"Minus three"
Sodium bombs filled the void ahead with vast silver plumes and streamers.
Staring into the black cube of the screen, Brek found once more the six tiny black
motes of Tony Grimm's ships. He couldn't help an uneasy shake of his head.