"Robert F. Young - When Time Was New" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

from here?"
She pointed to the left. "Over there. You come to a river, and then a swamp. Skip and I escaped this
morning when Fritad, who was guarding the lock, fell asleep. They're a bunch of sleepyheads, always
falling asleep when it's their turn to stand guard. Eventually the Greater Martian Space Police will track
the ship here; we thought we could hide out until they got here. We crept through the swamp and floated
across the river on a log. It — it was awful, with big snakes on legs chasing us, and — and —"
His shoulder informed him that she was trembling again. "Look, I'll tell you what, pumpkin," he said.
"You go back to the cabin and fix yourself and Skip something to eat. I don't know what kind of food
you're accustomed to, but it can't be too different from what Sam's got in stock. You'll find some square,
vacuum-containers in the cupboard—they contain sandwiches. On the refrigerator-shelf just above, you'll
find some tall bottles with circlets of little stars — they contain pop. Open some of each, and dig in.
Come to think of it, I'm hungry myself, so while you're at it, fix me something, too."
Again, she almost smiled. "All right, Mr. Carpenter. I'll fix you something special."
Alone in the driver's compartment, he surveyed the Cretaceous landscape through the front, lateral
and rear viewscopes. A range of young mountains showed far to the left. To the right was the distant line
of cliffs. The rear viewscope framed scattered stands of willows, fan palms and dwarf magnolias, beyond
which the forested uplands, wherein lay his entry area, began. Far ahead, volcanos smoked with
Mesozoic abandon.
79,061,889 years from now, this territory would be part of the state of Montana. 79,062,156 years
from now, a group of paleontologists digging somewhere in the vastly changed terrain would unearth the
fossil of a modern man who had died 79,062,156 years before his disinterment.
Would the fossil turn out to be his own?
Carpenter grinned, and looked up at the sky to where the two pteranodons still circle. It could have
been the fossil of a Martian.
He turned the triceratank around and started off in the opposite direction. "Come on, Sam," he said.
"Let's see if we can't find a good hiding place where we can lay over for the night. Maybe by morning I'll
be able to figure out what to do. Who'd ever have thought we'd wind up playing rescue-team to a couple
of kids?"
Sam grunted deep in his gear box and made tracks for the forested uplands.

The trouble with going back in time to investigate anachronisms was that frequently you found
yourself the author of the anachronism in question. Take the classic instance of Professor Archibald
Quigley.
Whether the story was true or not, no one could say for certain, but, true or not, it pointed up the
irony of time travel as nothing else could.
A stanch Coleridge admirer, Professor Quigley had been curious for years — or so the story went
— as to the identity of the visitor who had called at the farmhouse in Nether Stowey in the county of
Somersetshire, England in the year 1797 and interrupted Coleridge while the poet was writing down a
poem which he had just composed in his sleep. The visitor had hung around for an hour, and afterward
Coleridge hadn't been able to remember the rest of the poem. As a result, Kubla Khan was never
finished. Eventually, Professor Quigley's curiosity grew to such proportions that he could no longer
endure it, and he applied at the Bureau of Time Travel for permission to return to the place-time in order
that he might set his mind at ease. His request was granted, whereupon he handed over half his
life-savings without a qualm in exchange for a trip back to the morning in question. Emerging near the
farmhouse, he hid in a clump of bushes, watching the front door; then, growing impatient when no one
showed up, he went to the door himself, and knocked. Coleridge answered the knock personally, and
even though he asked the professor in, the dark look that he gave his visitor was something which the
professor never forgot to the end of his days.
Recalling the story, Carpenter chuckled. It wasn't really anything for him to be chuckling about,
though, because what had happened to the professor could very well happen to him. Whether he liked it