"Alan E. Nourse - Rocket to Limbo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nourse Alan E)

,.'. "Why do you want to go?" his father had asked him. "What are you looking for, Lars?
What do you think you're going to find out there on a Star Ship that you won't find right here
at home?"
Lars had grinned, a little embarrassed. Just like Dad, he thought, to dispense with
preliminaries and speak his mind bluntly. "I don't know, for sure. I just know I've got to do it. I
want to go where nobody ever went before. I want to do things that nobody else has ever
done, or ever could do." He patted Black's massive head, felt the dog muzzle his hand
affectionately. "Black knows why I want to go. Ask |fim why he always wants to see what the
other side of a hill looks like."
14 ROCKET TO LIMBO
'"And you have to go on a Star Ship for this?" Dad lit his pipe and watched his son's
face carefully. "You think all the frontiers are out there? You're wrong, son. Look at our farm,
our Greenland. Why, in your Grandfather Heldrigsson's day our whole Greenland was an
icecap!"
Lars shrugged. "The weather technicians-" he said.
 "But isn't that a challenge? They took an icy wasteland here and made it the richest
wheatland in the world. Look at the valley of the Amazon. It was a jungle once. Now its crops
feed millions of people. Siberia, Antarctica-rich lands, son. There's work for you here on
Earth."
The clatter of dishes in the kitchen had stopped, and Lars knew his mother was
listening. He shook his head. "I've thought about it, and it's no good. This is your frontier, not
mine. There's no more room on Earth, hasn't been for years. We need colonies, and the
Star Ships have to find them. And I couldn't have a better ship than the Ganymede. You
know that Commander Fox is the best planet-breaker in the business."
"It's a dangerous business."
Lars grinned. "Is that supposed to scare me off?"
"But you don't know how dangerous it may be," his mother said from the doorway.
"Suppose you found aliens on some planet you went to, some race of horrible monsters."
Lars laughed and gave her a bear hug. "Now you're just digging up things to worry
about. There aren't any monsters. Hundreds of ships have gone to hundreds of stars and
never a monster. At least not an intelligent monster. They haven't found a single sign of alien
intelligence anywhere. There aren't any aliens."
"Your Commander Fox thinks there are," his father said soberly.
"He's never found any. I don't think he ever will, either. It's just a pet idea of his."
"We still hate to see you go."
ROCKET TO LIMBO 15
"You'd think I was going on a Long Passage or something," Lars said. "It isn't like that.
With Koenig drive in our ship we'll be out to Vega III and back in two months. I won't be gone
for so long."
And yet now, as he slipped into the factory-fresh uniform and checked his pack again,
he felt a pang of regret at leaving the place where he was born and raised, where his family
had lived since his great-grandfather had come north from Iceland to break the newly
opened wheatland. It was a good home, and he would always love it, but he knew that his
frontier, somehow, was on the other side of the hill.
***
Showered, and immaculate in the new uniform, Lars stopped at an Eating Bar for coffee
and a burger-steak, offering his Colonial Service card to the robot cashier. Then he stepped
onto the rolling strip again. His Service Card and order sheets were in his pocket, readily at
hand. As he reached the loading gates, he noticed that no shuttle car was waiting at the end
of the strip, which seemed strange. Usually a car waited at each gate to carry passengers