"Otis Adelbert Kline - Man from the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kline Otis Adelbert)

Man from the Moon
By Otis Adelbert Kline
LOOKING forward is always an interesting occupation, for the imagination can be given
absolute free play and so many seemingly fantastic pictures may be called into being. But
equally absorbing can be the process of looking backward, though it must be done with
considerably less freedom of imagination. What was the origin of races? Did all of us –
Yellow, Black and White – start our generations in similar manner? How far afield of the
truth are anthropologists? Otis Adelbert Kline has pondered on these questions and, being
a writer of no mean ability, it naturally follows that his story is well worth serious
consideration. Therefore me recommend it heartily, knowing that you will agree with us.



W
E stood on the eastern rim of Crater “What single, if weak, leg supports your
Mound – my friend Professor theory that the craters of the moon were caused by
Thompson, the noted selenographer, meteorites?” I asked.
and I. Dusky shadows lengthened and “You are standing on it,” replied the
grew more intense in the great, deep basin before professor. Then, seeing me look around in
us, as the Sun, his face reddened as if from his perplexity, he added: “Crater Mound is the only
day’s exertions, sank slowly beyond the western known Terrestrial formation that exactly resembles
rim. in shape the great ring mountains of the moon. If
Behind us, Alamo Edwards, the dude Crater Mound was caused by the impact of a
wrangler who had brought us out from Canyon gigantic meteorite with the earth, there is a strong
Diabolo two weeks before, was dividing his time probability that the numerous ringed craters of the
between the chuck wagon and our outdoor moon were created in a like manner.”
cookstove in the preparation of our evening meal, “But was it?” I asked.
while our hobbled horses wandered about near-by, “That is something I can neither prove nor
searching out clumps of edible vegetation. disprove,” he replied. “The evidence I have thus
“How is the story progressing, Jim?” asked far discovered leads me to believe that many
the professor, referring to a half finished novel I relatively small meteoric fragments have fallen
had brought out with me to occupy my time with, here. But they could not have fallen singly, or by
while my friend puttered among the stones and twos and threes to make this dent three-quarters of
rubble in the vicinity. a mile in diameter and more than four hundred feet
“I’ve reached an impasse –” I began. below the surrounding earth level, to say nothing
“And so have I,” rejoined my friend of throwing up the ring on which we now stand to
dejectedly, “but of the two, mine is far the worst, a mean height of a hundred and fifty feet above the
for yours is in an imaginary situation, while mine plain.”
is real. You will eventually solve your problem by “Then how could they have fallen?”
using your imagination, which has no fixed “If this great earthen bowl was caused by
limitations. I can only solve mine by using my them, they must have struck this plain in an
reason, which is limited to deductions from facts. immense cluster at least a third of a mile in
If I do not find sufficient facts either to prove or diameter, probably more.”
disprove my theory, what have I? A hypothesis, “In that case, what has become of the
ludicrously wobbling on one puny leg, neither able cluster?”
to stand erect among established scientific truths “Part of it is probably buried beneath the soil.
nor to fall to dissolution among the mistaken ideas Part of it, exposed to the air, would have been
of the past.” burned to a fine ash, having generated a terrific
heat in its passage through the atmosphere and still