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

 "Yes. Marchen and Scott were off duty. The meteor not only penetrated the hull; it also jammed the
interconnecting lock and affected the relays of the on-board computer, causing it to accelerate the Zeus
beyond c. Prior to the impact, we had been traveling at just below c."
"Captain Royce, you're an astronaut, and as an astronaut you must have enough scientific
background to know that were a spaceship to exceed or even equal the speed of light, it and everyone
on board would be transformed into energy. The Zeus couldn't have exceeded c. If it had, you wouldn't
be here."
"Nevertheless, it did exceed c, and I am here."
"Thank you, Captain. That'll be all for now. Why don't you lie down for a while? You look as though
you could stand some rest.'

I did not tell the shrink about the glimpses I have been having since my return to Earth. Nor do I tell
him about them when I go to see him monthly, in keeping with the Service's orders. He would like very
much to put me away but has insufficient grounds to do so. Why should I lend him a helping hand?

My relationship with Barbara is platonic. I do not wish this to be so; I am in love with her, and she, I
think, is in love with me. But our love seems to drive passion away. She does not even invite me up to
her hotel room. It is always only a kiss and then goodnight when I take her home. It is impossible to look
at her and not want her. She is goddess-tall, and her black hair falls to her shoulders. It swirls sometimes
in the wind when we go driving. She wears summer dresses that bring out the graceful sweep of her legs
and the smooth flow of her hips. When she walks, it is like a princess walking. I am tempted sometimes
to ask her if she ever traced her genealogy; if she did, I am sure she would find she is the descendant of
an African king. And then at other times I am not sure. She has an odd universal quality, as though she
did not spring from any race, as though she is not part of mankind.
I do not know where she is from; she has never said, and I have refrained from asking. She is as
much a stranger in town as I was when I first returned. As I still am, for my former friends have grown
old and my conduct has alienated them. I am far younger than they, but in their eyes I am an ancient
astronaut, deranged from his journey among the stars. An outsider. And Barbara is an outsider beside
me.

My glimpses of non-c reality occur more and more frequently. They differ starkly from what I saw
beyond c. I had one the other night when I was driving home after leaving Barbara at her hotel. Like its
predecessors, it was of a maelstrom. It was as though mankind and the world and all the stars and
everything that had ever happened and everything that will ever happen had been put into a cosmic
mixing bowl and the beater turned on. I saw events, faces, scenes, constellations, quasars, pulsars
whirling in the night. I glimpsed my mother's face, my father's. I glimpsed a thousand faces I had never
seen before. All whirled among stars and battles and cities and primitive tracts of land, in a wild melee.
I suppose that such glimpses should not surprise me. It is hardly logical that the universe when
glimpsed from within would make more sense than when glimpsed from without; that if I could sit at a
desk, if indeed it was a desk that I sat at, and see the cosmos in the form of a paperweight, that the
interior of the paperweight would follow the dictates of science.
A favorite question of my shrink's, when I mention the paperweight, is, "Did you think you were
God?" Were I to say yes, he would have me. Schizophrenics often believe they are God, or that they sit
at God's right hand. But I simply tell him the truth: that my moment beyond c was too ephemeral to allow
me to think and that my thoughts since have never built up to a point where I regard myself as anything
more than a mere man.

If the glimpses were the only heritage of my flight, it would not be so bad. But tonight, as I stand in
my backyard looking up at the stars, I grow to the height of the moon. I reach out in wonderment and
touch its cold, still face. Then the illusion vanishes—if illusion it was—and I am Earthbound again, a little