"Robert F. Young - Glimpses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

They think it is sinful of me to lie around and do nothing, even though I am relatively rich. In their
philosophy, a man should work, work, work.
It is summer, and Barbara and I often go for long rides in the country. Sometimes I let her take the
wheel. The car is bright red in color, and the redness makes her seem blacker than she really is. Blacker,
but no more beautiful. She was beautiful to begin with. It is a fine car, but I doubt that it has the power
Mercedes-Benzes had of old, and probably it doesn't ride as well. But I am a poor boy grown rich, and
do not miss a bit of frosting on my cake.
When I am with Barbara, I never have glimpses. And I never tell my tale in any of the bars we
sometimes stop in. But she can tell from the way people look at me that they think I am queer.

I told my tale to the debriefers after I brought the ship back to Earth. They listened politely and asked
lots of questions. And they recorded everything I told them. Afterward they had me tell it to one of the
shrinks the Space Service employs. I could tell from the questions he asked me that he was trying hard
for paranoid schizophrenia. Shrinks always try for that. I think they like to let the term loose because it
sounds so erudite and mysterious. I do not think even they know exactly what it means.
He kept asking me to describe the room with the two windows in which I found myself after the Zeus
exceeded c. I could not describe it clearly, because its walls and ceiling and floor were little more than
layers of darkness. I could see through the layers to other layers, and the layers seemed to go on
forever.
He kept zeroing in on the desk I had found myself sitting at. "What kind of a desk was it, Captain
Royce?"
"It was just a desk."
"Was it made out of steel or wood?"
"I don't know."
"And you were sitting before it, presumably on a chair, staring at the—ah—paperweight and the
spaceship lying on its surface?"
"Yes."
"And the spaceship was an exact miniature of the Zeus?"
"Down to the smallest detail."
"What did you think the paperweight was?"
"I've told you over and over that at the time I didn't think anything. But afterward I concluded it was
the universe."
"Was it sort of like one of those little glass paperweights you pick up and shake and cause it to snow
inside?"
"Sort of."
"Could you see stars in it? Galaxies? Quasars?"
"All I could see was blackness."
"Why didn't you pick it up and shake it? Maybe you would have seen stars then."
"I didn't think to."
"All right, Captain Royce, let's get to the windows. Let's take the one you looked out first, the one on
your left, I believe you said. Tell me again what you thought you saw."
"I saw a mountain. But it wasn't truly a mountain. It was Marchen."
"You mean that Marchen was so large he appeared to be a mountain?"
"Yes. He was sitting on a gray plain with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms locked around
them, sort of in a fetal position."
"And the other window—what did you see when you looked through that?"
'Another gray plain—perhaps the same one—and Scott lying on it. Like a gigantic ridge. Those were
the positions I found both men in, later on in the cabin, after the Zeus dropped back below c."
"When the meteor penetrated the hull and the cabin's air was sucked out into space, you were in the
command module, were you not?"