"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future's Worlds of Tomorrow 02 - Pluto" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

ever before been accorded, Wenzi tried frantically to
enlist in the coming Venus-Mercury expedition. But his
youth, and lack of technical training, prevented this.
Nothing daunted, the intrepid pioneer applied him-
self to technical studies and succeeded in joining the
Mars-Jupiter expedition of 1988. He was one of the few
of the crew who remained loyal to Johnson and Carew
when the crew threatened mutiny at going beyond
Mars. After Johnson's death on Callisto, when the expe-
dition landed on Jupiter, Wenzi was one of the first
Earth-men to step onto that mighty world. And there,
rashly, venturing alone into the jungle, he was attacked
by a Jovian "crawler," and so seriously injured that he
almost died on the way back to Earth.
EXPEDITION TO PLUTO
Wenzi's injuries did not prevent him from joining
Mark Carew in the historic 1991 expedition to Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune. But a fall while exploring on
Uranus so aggravated his old hurts that for four years
he lay in an Earth hospital, apparently hopelessly crip-
pled, and sending innumerable pitiful messages to his
idol. Thus, when Carew rocketed away again in 1994 in
an attempt to reach Pluto, Wenzi could not go and was
forced to lie on a hospital cot in utter misery at not be-
ing able to be along.
By 1999, Carew had been given up for lost, since he
had not returned nor sent back any word. The general
belief was that Pluto was too far to be reachable as yet,
and public attention turned toward the more easily ac-
cessible worlds of Mars and Venus and Jupiter, where
Earthmen were beginning to stream out to build colo-
nial cities and trade with the native races. In this great
fever of colonization, Pluto was more or less forgotten.
But Jan Wenzi had not forgotten. The old fever of
space-exploration gripped him as strongly as ever. He
had been released from hospital by that year, but he
was badly crippled, unable to walk more than a few
steps at a time, his hair graying even at the age of forty-
two from long hardship and suffering. Yet he had deter-
mined to reach Pluto.
There was general criticism when Wenzi began
forming his Pluto Expedition, because of his physical
disabilities and the enormous difficulties of the project.
Armchair space-travelers pointed out the impossibility
of the whole attempt. Scientists weightily listed the
2
tremendous obstacles to success in such an undertak-
ing, and the public as a whole had no belief whatever in
its soundness. Wenzi was mocked and satirized in car-
toons and on the theatrical stage.