"Andre Norton - Astra 02 - Star Born [4.1]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

There—to picture that was a danger signal. Whenever his thoughts
reached that particular point, Raf tried to think of something else, to break
the chain of dismal foreboding. How? By joining in Wonstead’s monologue of
complaint and regret? Raf had heard the same words over and over so often that
they no longer had any meaning—except as a series of sounds he might miss if the
man who shared this rocket were suddenly stricken dumb.
“Should never have put in for training—” Wonstead’s whine went up
the scale.
That was unoriginal enough. They had all had that idea the minute
after the sorter had plucked their names for crew inclusion. No matter what
motive had led them into the stiff course of training—the fabulous pay, a real
interest in the project, the exploring fever—Raf did not believe that there was
a single man whose heart had not sunk when he had been selected for flight. Even
he, who had dreamed all his life of the stars and the wonders which might lie
just beyond the big jump, had been honestly sick on the day he had shouldered
his bag aboard and had first taken his place on this mat and waited, dry mouthed
and shivering, for blast-off.
One lost all sense of time out here. They ate sparingly, slept when
they could, tried to while away the endless hours artificially divided into set
periods. But still weeks might be months, or months weeks. They could have been
years in space—or only days. All they knew was the unending monotony which
dragged upon a man until he either lapsed into a dreamy rejection of his
surroundings, as had Hamp and Floy, or flew into murderous rages, such as kept
Morris in solitary confinement at present. And no foreseeable end to the flight—
Raf breathed shallowly. The air was stale, he could almost taste it.
It was difficult now to remember being in the open air under a sky, with fresh
winds blowing about one. He tried to picture on that dull strip of metal
overhead a stretch of green grass, a tree, even the blue sky and floating white
clouds. But the patch remained stubbornly gray, the murmur of Wonstead went on
and on, a drone in his aching ears, the throb of the ship’s life beat through
his own thin body.
What had it been like on those legendary early flights, when the
secret of the overdrive had not yet been discovered, when any who dared the path
between star and star had surrendered to sleep, perhaps to wake again
generations later, perhaps never to rouse again? He had seen the few documents
discovered four and five hundred years ago in the raided headquarters of the
scientific outlaws who had fled the regimented world government of Pax and dared
space on the single hope of surviving such a journey in cold sleep, the secret
of which had been lost. At least, Raf thought, they had escaped the actual
discomfort of the voyage.
Had they found their new world or worlds? The end of their ventures
had been debated thousands of times since those documents had been made public,
after the downfall of Pax and the coming into power of the Federation of Free
Men.
In fact it was the publication of the papers which had given the
additional spur to the building of the RS armada. What man had dared once he
could dare anew. And the pursuit of knowledge which had been so long forbidden
under Pax was heady excitement for the world. Research and discovery became
feverish avenues of endeavor. Even the slim hope of a successful star voyage and
the return to Terra with such rich spoils of information was enough to harness