"Chad Oliver - Hands Across Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

Within the last few hundred years, unknown communities, semi-civilized tribes that for
ages have lived out their lives alone, have been uncovered. In most cases, they are scientifically
and culturally behind the rest of the civilized world, and if they do not actually welcome the
intrusion, they do not have the force to resist it. But the time must come when a race as
advanced as ourselves will appear from out of space. Then the problem of making first contact
and establishing relationship will call for a careful, infallible scientific approach on the part
of both sides.

The first step in the scientific method involves the observation of facts and the formulation
of THE PROBLEM...
 THE MAN NAMED Copa Paco did not, of course, think of himself as an alien. On the contrary,
there was no doubt in his mind that he was a human being, and shared species relationship with all others
on Capella IV. The only aliens involved in the affair were from Earth.
Naturally enough, considering the circumstances, Copa Paco was nobody's fool. He was quite well
aware of such factors as ethnocentrism, to say nothing of egotism. He knew that what you chose to
define as "alien" depended pretty much on where you happened to be sitting at the time.
That didn't make his problem any easier, however.
He cursed his pipe audibly; the damned thing went out at regularly predictable intervals no matter
how carefully he smoked it. He knocked out the ashes and a soggy lump of unburned tobacco into a
desk vaporizer, refilled the pipe, and lit it again with a fatalistic acceptance of the facts of life. He blew
out a small cloud of blue smoke, aimed in the general direction of the air purifier, and felt a little better.
He walked over to the viewscreen and looked into it. The stars looked back at him, and the system
of Sol was very close. He began to feel worse again. The palms of his hands started to sweat.
"I wish the whole planet would drop dead," Copa Paco said.
"You'd better take it easy, guy," advised Dota Tado, the semantics expert. "If you blow your top,
we're through. Anyway, you're mixing your metaphors, or something."
"I wish you'd drop dead also," communicated Copa Paco, puffing harshly on his pipe.
"Civil war," said Dota Tado. "A great beginning. You're supposed to be a co-ordinator, remember?
Don't you read your own propaganda? You're a disgrace to the force. I'd have you shot at sunrise,
except that there isn't any sunrise."
"Oh, go to hell," responded Copa Paco, but he smiled in spite of himself. Dota was a good man; he
knew his business. "I'm okay, really," he said. "Just spouting off steam. It's just that every once in a while
you get to thinking about it, and how close it is, and how much depends on it—you know."
"Yes, I know. I know, too, that you'll come through with flying colors; stop worrying about it."
"Good advice," admitted Copa Paco. "Try to take it."
The ship throbbed around them with the surging power of the overdrive, and both men fell silent.
Copa Paco smoked his pipe carefully, nursing it along.
He felt the cold sweat in his hands and wiped them on his handkerchief.
It was a nasty problem—nasty because it had never been faced before.
Nasty because there was no known solution. He went over it again, step by step.
The world of Capella IV—his world—was quite similar to Earth. It was, in fact, almost identical.
This was largely a coincidence, since the Aurigae system, of which Capella was a part, happened to be a
binary, with Capella being a good sixteen times as large as Sol, though of the same general type.
It was a coincidence that had consequences, however.
Life had evolved on Capella IV in exactly the same manner that it had on Earth. All of the details
were not precisely the same, of course, but there was a part-for-part correspondence of generalized
stages. Capella IV had its aquatic forms, its amphibians, its reptiles, its mammals. It had its own
counterpart of the Dryopithecus-Meganthropus-Pithecanthropus chain, culminating finally in Homo
sapiens—an erect biped, pleased with his brain, handy with his hands, variable in his color.
The biped had dreamed of the stars, and his dreams had come true.