"Robert F. Young - To Touch a Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

memory banks—that if she exceeded two orbits around Extend she would be running the risk of
disintegration. Would he, when the time came, be able to convince her that the only way she could save
her own "life" was by saving his?
It was a chance he would have to take. Because if he tried to convince her now and succeeded she
would try another means of killing him and this time the attempt might very well come off. By keeping her
in ignorance for a while he could obtain the time he needed.
"Well, I'll leave you to your thoughts, Ben," she said. "I imagine you have quite a few."
And so saying, she dematerialized.
The Mary gave a slight shudder as the first braking rocket fired. A series of shudders followed as
successive rockets discharged themselves. Then the Mary was in orbit.

4. Most paradoxes involve religious legends that through the ages successive generations of
believers have turned into fact. Anti-Paradox Manifestations occur when such legends finally
become fact and lie in wait till mankind discovers them and—in the case of the
ancients—misinterprets them and unwittingly supplies them with the ingredients necessary for the
correction. In ancient times, APMs sometimes endured for thousands of years.

WHEN Mary next materialized the ship had entered its second orbit around Extend. She was
furious.
"What kind of a pilot are you, Powers?" she demanded. "We're falling into the sun!"
At first Powers thought she was lying. Then he saw that the rime had vanished from the control knobs
and he discovered that he could stand up.
"How—how much altitude have we lost?"
"Four million miles and every second we stand here we're losing thousands more. Get out of that suit
and into the programing room before it's too late!"
He could only stand there. Four million miles—more like five million by now. It was already too late.
According to the briefing he had received from the ChiMuZeta techs, the intensity of ChiMuZeta
radiation at even minus one million miles was double that of impotentialization level.
He had spent hours programing the course, had checked and double-checked the
orbital-velocity-altitude ratio. How could he possibly have erred?
Suddenly out of a corner of his mind came a thought he had kicked around shortly after the briefing
and then forgotten about: how could the first man to orbit Extend have found the impotentialization level
by accident? The odds against his doing so were staggering.
Perhaps he hadn't found it by accident.
And perhaps Powers' miscalculation wasn't an accident either. Perhaps he and Mary were pieces on
a cosmic checkerboard with no more volition than the checkers they themselves had used so short a time
ago.
But his insight went no deeper. He felt the awesome shudder that passed through the ship as its
overheated drive went off, saw the fiery surface of Extend take on dreadful detail as the Mary's fall
accelerated. He heard Mary's screams as she tried vainly to pull him from the room. He saw the
bulkheads shimmer, then fade away as disintegration began.
And then he knew no more.

5. APMs, being a part of basic reality, are not subject to time: this is a restriction which we
ourselves impose upon them. Hence the seeming anachronism resulting from an APM correction
is an anachronism only in our own eyes, and not a true anachronism at all.
 IN THE dream that was not a dream Powers climbed a black mountain, descended into a dark
abyss from whose depths stars could be seen shining high' in the immensities. He stood there darkly,
looking up at them, then lifting his arms to them he seized their light and wove a golden ladder which he
climbed like Jacob into heaven. There lay the stars before him in a great black river of spacetime—he