The Motion Demon by Stefan Grabinski, Miroslaw Lipinski Read Free Book Online Page A

comparison to absolute motion and the fact that, in the end, despite everything, you remain on the ground? Even if you could invent a devilish train that would circumvent the entire globe in one hour, eventually you’d return to the same point you started from: you are chained to the ground.’
    ‘Ha, ha!’ scoffed the railwayman. ‘You are certainly a poet, my dear sir. You can’t be serious?’
    ‘What kind of influence can even the most terrific, fabulous speed of an earthly train have on absolute motion and its effect?’
    ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ bellowed the amused stationmaster.
    ‘None!’ shouted Szygon. ‘It won’t change its absolute path by even an inch; it won’t change its cosmic route even by a millimetre. We are riding on a globe turning in space.’
    ‘Like a fly on a rubber ball. Ha, ha, ha. What thoughts, what concepts! You are not only a first-class conversationalist, but a splendid humorist as well.’
    ‘Your pathetic train, your ant-like, frail train with its best, boldest “speed”, as you like to term it, relies—notice, I’m clearly underlining this—relies simultaneously on twenty relative motions, of which every one on its own is by far stronger and unquestionably more powerful than your miniature momentum.’
    ‘Hmm…interesting, most fascinating!’ derided the unyielding opponent. ‘Twenty relative motions—a substantial number.’
    ‘I’ve omitted the incidental ones which for certain no railwayman has even dreamed of, and will mention the principal, pivotal ones known to every schoolboy. A train rushing with the greatest fury from A to B has simultaneously to make a complete rotation with the Earth round its axis in a twenty-four hour period….’
    ‘Ha, ha, ha! That’s novel, absolutely novel.’
    ‘At the same time it whirls with the entire globe around the sun….’
    ‘Like a moth around a lamp.’
    ‘Spare me your jokes! They’re not interesting. But that’s not all. Together with the earth and the sun, the train goes along an elliptical line, relative to the constellation Centaurus, towards some unknown point in space to be found in the direction of the constellation Hercules.’
    ‘Philology at the service of astronomy. Parbleu ! How profound!’
    ‘You’re an idiot, my dear sir! Let’s move over to the incidental motions. Have you ever heard anything about the Earth’s processional motion?’
    ‘Maybe I’ve heard about it. But what does all this concern us? Long live the motion of a train!’
    Szygon fell into a rage. He raised his mallet-like hand and let it drop forcefully on the scoffer’s head. But his arm cut only through air: the intruder had vanished somewhere; the space opposite was suddenly vacant.
    ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ chortled someone from the other corner of the compartment.
    Szygon turned around and spotted the ‘stationmaster’ squatting between the headrest and the net; somehow he had contracted himself to a small size, and now looked like an imp.
    ‘Ha, ha, ha! Well? Will we be civil in the future? If you want to talk further with me, then behave properly. Otherwise, I won’t come down. A fist, my dear sir, is too ordinary an argument.’
    ‘For thick-headed opponents it’s the only one; nothing else can be as persuasive.’
    ‘I’ve been listening,’ the other drawled, returning to his old place, ‘I’ve been listening patiently for a quarter of an hour to your utopian arguments. Now listen a little to me.’
    ‘Utopian?!’ growled Szygon. ‘The motions I’ve mentioned are therefore fictitious?’
    ‘I don’t deny their existence. But of what concern are they to me? I’m only interested in the speed of my train. The only conclusive thing to me is the motion of engines. Why should I be concerned about how much forward I’ve moved in relation to interstellar space? One has to practical; I am a positivist, my dear sir.’
    ‘An argument worthy of a table leg. You must sleep well, Mr Stationmaster?’
    ‘Thank you, yes. I