"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

part.
But the first visit of Mitchell Prell, when Ed Dukas was five, was, to
the boy, like acquaintance with a legend. "Hi, Nipper!" were the first words
his uncle had spoken to Eddie. Dr. Mitchell Prell was his mother's brother. He
was a much smaller man than Eddie's dad, and dark blond. He was famous. And he
brought gifts of the Moon. Nipper," he said. "An opal naturally in gold. For
your mom. And this case of instruments dug up in Martian ruins, for your dad.
Fifty million years old but better than anything designed by human beings for
locating ores far underground. And this for you -- also from Mars. I haven't
been there for a long time. But I got an old friend to send me the stuff to
the labs on the Moon."
Maybe Eddie's gift had once been a toy for the offspring of extinct
Martian monsters. It was triangular like a kite, metallic, with a faint
lavender sheen. When you whistled a certain way, a jet of air made it rise
high in the sky. But it always came back. Atomic power was in it somewhere.
For it never ran out of energy.
Uncle Mitch never seemed to say much. He didn't get deep into
philosophy. He set up queer apparatus in his room, and a kid could look at it
if he didn't touch. And to one of Dad's questions he answered briefly, "Yes,
we're making headway in the labs on the Moon. There'll be a motor for star




Page 5
ships. If, in our experiments, hyperspace itself doesn't burst at the seams
under that level of power. No, we're not yet trying for speeds of more than a
fraction of that of light. A trip to a star will take a long time."
It soon came out that Uncle Mitch had another interest. He kept in a
glass tube something that squirmed and wriggled, and felt like warm flesh
though its natural form, when at rest, was a slender cylinder of pencil size.
About that he would only say, "Call it alive if you want to. But not
like us. Invented and artificial, and far more rugged than our flesh. For the
rest, wait and see if anything comes of it. Maybe it'll become the clay of the
superman. Schaeffer, here on Earth, is working on it, too." Uncle Mitch stayed
for a week. Then he was gone rocketing out to the labs, isolated for safety at
the center of a mare on the always hidden hemisphere of the Moon.
"Mitch knows what he wants and is direct about it" was Jack Dukas's
comment. "Simple. No conflicts. The scientist's approach. Wise or stupid? Who
knows?"
Eddie was six, and then seven. The years moved slowly, but he grew and
hardened with them. By the time he was twelve, sports and study and awareness
of realities had toughened his body and matured his soul considerably. That
was fortunate, for this was his and mankind's fateful year. The day came when
the household robots were fixing up the guestroom specially for Uncle Mitch
again. Dad was afield, a hundred miles away, to look over a vein of quartz
crystal that was to be shipped to the lunar laboratories. At 9:00 p.m.,
Eddie's father had not yet returned.
Eddie was sprawled on his bed looking lazily at the translucent blue
font of the lamp beside it. The color was rich and beautiful, the carvings