"Edmond Hamilton - Earthmen No More" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

was going and the high dreams it had.
then he realized that some inexorable
Hard- faced iron-handed men, braver than
current had caught him and was sweeping
angels and more hungry than they were
him toward the light, hurling him at it in a
brave, hungry for new worlds and the
swift relentless rush. He knew that he did
unknown things that lay beyond the
not want to go to it—but there was no
mountains of the Moon, beyond the still
escape.
canals of Mars, beyond the glittering
The little point of light leaped and
deadly Belt.
spread into a sun, a nova, a shattering
He remembered now the men and the
glare. Terror overcame him. He clawed at
ship, how they had gambled their lives
the comforting darkness as it fled past but
against glory and lost. “We shot the
he could not hold onto it and it seemed to
Asteroids,” he muttered, in the silence of
him that he could hear the small thin
his mind. “Jupiter was there ahead of us, a
big golden apple almost in our hands. I


1
remember how the moons looked, aside and his hands, very strong but
swarming like bees around it. I delicate of touch, busied the mselves with a
remember…” vial and a gleaming needle.
The meteor—the tearing agony of Carey lay still. For the moment he had
metal, the last glimpse of horror in the ship not the strength to do anything else. The
before the air-burst took him with it into room was small. It was fitted as a
space, through the riven pilot-dome. The 1aboratory, incredibly compact, and many
brief, bitter knowledge that this was death. of the objects that his wandering gaze
“Dead,” he said again. “I'm dead.” passed over were strange to him.
The strange voice answered, “If you One of these objects was a small
want to you can live again.” cubical case of semi- translucent metal,
He thought about that. He thought about resting on a table. The surface nearest
it for a long time in the darkness. To live Carey was fitted with twin lenses and a
again—the light and the warmth, the disc, so that it bore an unsettling
hunger and pain and hope, the wanting, the resemblance to a face. Carey thought
being able to want. He thought and he was vaguely that it must be some sort of a
not sure and then at last he whispered, communicator.
“How? Tell me how!” Suddenly he said, “I’m in a ship.”
“Open your eyes and come back, back The red-haired man smiled. “How can
where the light is. You were here before, you tell? We’re in free fall.”
don't you remember? Open your eyes, John “I can tell.” Carey tried to struggle up.