"Robert F. Young - One Love Have I" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

he collapsed into the easy chair before the fire.
Numbly he turned the pages to the first entry. It was dated September 15, 2146 . . .

I walked down the steps, the stone slabs of steps that front the tomb in which men are buried
alive, and I walked through the streets of the city.
I walked through the streets, the strange streets, past hordes of indifferent people. Gradually I
became aware of the passing hours, the fleeting minutes, the swift-flying seconds; and each
second became an unbearable pain, each minute a dull agony, each hour a crushing eternity ...
I do not know how I came to the spaceport. Perhaps God directed my footsteps there. But the
moment I saw the shimmering spires of the new ships pointing into the September sky, everything
I had ever read concerning the Sweike Drive coalesced blindingly in my mind, and I knew what I
had to do.
A clock which is in motion moves slower than a stationary clock. The difference is
imperceptible at ordinary velocities, but when the speed of light is approached, the difference is
enormous.
The Sweike Drive approaches the speed of light. It approaches the speed of light as closely as
it can be approached, without both men and ship becoming pure energy.
A clock on a ship employing the Sweike Drive would barely move at all ...

Not daring to believe, he skipped a page .. .

September 18, 2146—They tell me it will take two years! Two of my sweet, my precious years
to become a space-line stewardess! But there's no other way, no other way at all, and my
application is already in. I know they will accept it—with everyone clamoring for the stars the
need for ship's personnel is . . .

His hands were shaking uncontrollably and the pages escaped from his fingers, days, months, years
fluttering wildly by. He halted them finally . . .

June 3, 2072 (Sirius 41)-I have measured time by many moving clocks, and moving clocks are
kind. But when planet-fall arrives, stationary clocks take over, and stationary clocks are not kind.
You wait in some forsaken port for the return run and you count each minute and resent its
passage bitterly. For over the decades, the minutes add together into months and years and you
are afraid that despite the moving clocks, you will be too old after all ...

The pages escaped again and he stopped them at the final entry ...

February 9, 2081—Today I was officially notified that my application for the Arcturus run has
been accepted! I have been in a kind of ecstatic trance ever since, dreaming and planning,
because I can dream and plan now! Now I know that I shall see my beloved again, and I shall
wear a white gardenia in my hair, and the perfume he likes the best, and I shall have our house
rebuilt and everything in it restored— there'll he plenty of time if the 65-year estimate is correct;
and when my beloved is released I shall be there waiting to take him in my arms, and though I
shall not be as young as he remembers me, I shall not be old either. And the lonely years between
the stars shall not have been in vain ...
For I have only one love. I shall never have another.

The words blurred on the page and Philip let the diary slip from his fingers to the arm of the chair.
"Miranda," he whispered.
He stood up. "Miranda," he said.