"David Grinnell & Lin Carter - Destination Saturn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grinnell David)

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I

The moose stood atop a low hill and stared ruminatingly through a row of evergreens at the
long, low-slung house beside the shores of Great Slave Lake. And you couldn't blame this fine
specimen of Alces americanus for staring, for this particular structure was an eye-stunner even
by the sophisticated standards of 2080.

After all, you expect the home of one of Earth's youngest and most adventurous
multibillionaires to be a bit on the palatial side. And so it was: almost an acre of glistening
plastic, elaborately sculptured and friezed in a flamboyant, Imperial style of architecture that
might be best described as Neo-Napoleonic Baroque with a few touches of Ivan-the Terrible
Pseudo-Gothic added for extra impressiveness. As a modest little lakeside cottage, it had
everything, including an artfully camouflaged private airport, a lake-front harbor filled with
new-model racing craft of the air-cushion type currently popular, and a complete staff of robot
servants. And there it was, right smack in the center of the chill Canadian wilderness, kept
comfortably warm by concealed electronic mirrors placed amid the exotic flowering
shrubbery.

Yes, even a simple moose might be expected to goggle at the home of Ajax Calkins, sole
heir to the incredible Calkans industrial complex upon which the space age was built. This
particular moose, raised to roam the near-Arctic tundras of northern Canada, had probably
never been exposed to the luxurious splendors of modern living, and he seemed
fascinated—especially by the living room, which was clearly visible through the wide
floor-to-ceiling windows.

It may have been that the moose had never seen a quarrel between two humans before. For
that was what was taking place at this moment within that luxurious living room.

Ajax Calkins, a slim, fairly good-looking but not overly impressive young man of
twenty-five or -six was engaged in heated argument with a young girl (with whom, in fact, he
was also engaged to be married). Ajax was personable enough to the casual eye, but he would
himself be the first to agree with the statement that his appearance gave no suggestion of a
fantastically wealthy Captain of Industry, and even less of the Leader of Men he so earnestly
wished to be. His eyes were blue, but pale and dreamy rather than keen or intense. His straight
hair was brownish, and a mediocre shade of brown at that. His mustache was slight and (to be
frank) hardly visible, unless you stood very close to him. The crowning disappointment, from
Ajax's point of view—was his height, something short of the six full feet for which he longed. It
wasn't any comfort to remember that he was taller than Julius Caesar or Napoleon. Ajax's
appearance belied his dreams. In an age of over-security and hyper-civilization, with no more
frontiers to cross or kingdoms to conquer, he dreamed of carving empires of his own from
virgin wilderness… of emulating the heroic kingdom-builders of the past, like Pizarro, the bold
conquistador who pulled down the Incas and won a continent for Spain, or Cecil Rhodes, who
hacked a mighty nation out of trackless jungle and named it after himself, or that great
explorer, Captain Cook, who found and claimed virgin Australia for his Queen. Ajax had a
mental picture of himself that was part Clive of India and part Lawrence of Arabia, with a little