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"Say, buddy, ya wouldn't happen ta be going as far as the coast, would ya?" he
said in a wheezy voice. "Any chance I could get a ride? Got a woman and three
kids back in
Kansas...Need work real bad."
"Can't do that, pal," Ferracini told him. "Rules. Boss checks up all the
time." He took his hand from his pocket and held out a note, at the same time
straining every nerve fiber to catch any hint of movement behind him -- a foot
falling stealthily, or the almost inaudible intake of breath as an arm was
raised to swing. This was the moment when he placed total trust in the timing
and judgment of his invisible partner "Here's a dollar -- go get a meal."
Even in the darkness he could see the man's eyes widen. '~A whole dollar! Say,
are you sure you -- "
"Take it and get something to eat. There's more guys inside." The man took the
bill, mumbled something in acknowledgment, and shuffled away toward the door
of the diner. Cassidy materialized silently out of the blackness behind where
Ferracini was standing. "No problem?" He sounded mildly disappointed.
"No -- just a guy trying to find a job."
But taking precautions had long ago become second nature. Ferracini tossed
Cassidy the keys, and five minutes later they were Indianapolis-bound once
more.
CHAPTER 3
ANY PROCESS THAT INVOLVED tinkering with the past was bound to have
implications which by normal standards would be judged peculiar. In fact, it
wrought havoc with all the conventional notions of common sense, logic, and
causality.
One peculiarity that followed from the ability of the machine constructed at
Tularosa in
1975 to communicate with a return-gate assembled at some point in the past was
that as long as the return-gate had, in fact, come into existence, it made no
difference what particular sequence of events took place later in time to
produce it. Thus, by setting the 1975 machine's range to the appropriate
value, it could be connected through to the completed return-gate,
up-and-running by mid-1939, as soon as the 1975 machine became operational.
There was nothing which said that in the
1975 sequence of events, the mission scheduled to go back to build the
return-gate had actually to have been dispatched.
Given that such a possibility was implicit in the bizarre logic of the
situation, it was inevitable that the mission planners would exploit the fact
to test the entire system's rationale before the final decision to send the
mission was taken. And that was precisely what had been done: As soon as
construction of the 1975 machine had progressed to the point of its being able
to receive simple, static communications messages (handling objects would
require additional hardware), a message had appeared from May 1939, confirming
that the mission had arrived safely and was assembling the return-gate on
schedule. This constituted the preliminary "test," which the troops were told
had proved satisfactory.
President Kennedy had approved the final "go" order, and the mission had
departed as soon as the minimum hardware needed to confer projection
capability was installed. Further investigation of the physics, it was agreed,
could be left for others to worry about later, along with such seemingly
paradoxical issues as what would have happened if the mission were never sent,
since it had evidently arrived, anyway. The main thing was to see the team on
its way, safely removed from the uncertain world of 1975.
"Yes, yes, I can see your point, Anna, but it provided us with as much in the
way of reassurance as anybody could have hoped for in the circumstances."
Mortimer Greene, the mission's senior scientist and head of the U.S. Sugar
group, straightened up and gestured with the crowbar that he had been using to
open the crates around him. "The urgency of the situation ruled out any
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possibility of examining all the theoretical unknowns."
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Greene was in his early fifties, of medium height and broadly built, with a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]