"Harry Harrison - One Step From Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Wife to the Lord

Waiting Place

The Life Preservers

From Fanaticism, or for Reward

Heavy Duty

A Tale of the Ending


Matter Transmitter
INTRODUCTION —The
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THE HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION is the history of mankind. This may sound like too broad a
statement, but it is certainly more accurate than the accepted history as measured by wars, rulers, and
politics.

In the beginning there was walking, and mankind walked around the world. On foot, generation after
generation, homo sapiens spread out from his homeland, usually considered to be in centralAfrica , and
crossed the land bridges to the other continents. Later, after sailing craft had been perfected, isolated
places like the Pacific islands were settled — but the foot came first. Nor was it — nor is it — an inferior
form of transportation by any test. The Roman roads were used by chariots and carts, but were built
primarily to enable the foot soldiers to reach their objectives quickly and easily, sometimes at the other
end of the continent.

The parallels can be easily drawn. When only the tiny minority traveled, society was fixed at a simple
agrarian level. The life of the seventeenth-century European peasant differed very little from the life of the
eleventh-century European peasant. Stuck in the mud. Destined to be born and to live and die in the
same place.

But not the seafarers. As soon as men could build ships to sail long distances-they did. The Myceneans
visitedEngland in the fifteenth century B.C. The Vikings went toNorth America in the eleventh century. A
few hundred years later the Spanish pioneered regular routes to the Americans and the world was
changed. For the worse, as far as the Amerinds were concerned, but certainly changed. Yet once the
Europeans had covered the globe and grabbed what they could, things settled down rapidly to a
condition pretty much like that which had gone before. Ships were improved, but they were essentially
more of the same thing, and the world still dozed at home with little thought of the future. The industrial
revolution was struggling to get started inEngland but was not making much progress. What is the use of
having machines to make more products if the products just pile up in an empty lot next to the factory?
They have to be moved away, and fast. Canals helped a bit and a lot were dug, but this was just a variant
form of water transport and in essence added more ports to the world trade routes. People still walked
or rode horseback or had the horses pull slow carts just as they had for a good number of centuries.
What was needed was a radical change.