"William Morrison - Mel Oliver and Space Rover on Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

Copyright 1954 by William Morrison
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7254
All rights reserved. Editors and reviewers may use short passages from the book without written permission.
Printed in the U.S.A. by H. Wolff
Designed by Sidney Solomon


Contents

CHAPTER

1. Two Stowaways in Space
2. Wild Beasts On the Loose
3. The Circus on the Ship
4. The Curious Kabror
5. Mel Makes a Friend—and Loses Her
6. Mel Meets an Enemy
7. Welcome to Mars!
8. Killers in the Circus
9. Rover Takes a Rest
10. Mel Is Followed
11. Mel Gets a Chaperone
12. Under the Martian Sky
13. The Police Investigate
14. Rover Unmasks an Enemy

CHAPTER 1

TWO
STOWAWAYS IN
SPACE

HE WAS going to be caught. Not long from now, he knew, he was going to be trapped and thrown
into the brig. The only question was what to do before then.
The ship was still picking up speed, not as rapidly as during the takeoff, but at a steady acceleration
of almost half a gee, so that if it kept up at this rate, in a few hours it would he going dozens of miles a
second. Earth was already a thousand miles or more behind him. Whatever else they did, they couldn't
send him back now.
Mel Oliver took a deep breath, listened carefully for a moment, and then, fighting against the
acceleration which pushed him back, crawled out from behind the crate of sup- plies where he had
stowed away. The crate itself was firmly clamped to the floor, so that no matter whether the ship
speeded up or slowed down, it wouldn't shift around.
He wouldn't be able to hide long. With the takeoff only a few minutes behind them, the Captain and
the engineers might still be busy checking the engines, making sure that the atomic fuel was disintegrating
properly, that the ship was on its carefully calculated course. But soon they'd get around t estimating the
air being recirculated through the different compartments, they'd take readings of the temperature all
through the ship. They'd detect the extra air he was using up, the heat his body was giving off. They'd
know a stowaway was aboard, and they'd find him.
What should he do before then?