"Chad Oliver - The Winds of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

books. He had some knowledge of linguistics, enough to estimate what he looked at. Some of his
guesses would be wrong, but anything he saved would be unique. Poetry, certainly. Novels, of course.
And history, science, political tracts, and autobiogra-phies, most definitely autobiographies …
"Let's go," Derryoc said after what seemed only a few minutes but had actually been hours. "We've
got time for some close-ups before we start-back. Did you see that statue out in the square? Almost
untouched, if we could just find the head."
"Probably buried in the sand," Nlesine said. "I don't blame him."
They went about their task while the warm sun blazed down the arc of afternoon. It was a good sun,
and it did its job as it had always done it, unconcerned that its rays no longer lighted a living world.
They already had maps of the city, photographed from the ship, so they spent most of their remaining
time inside the ruins of houses, preserving what little they could on film.
When they were through they returned as they had come, back through the litteced streets, out again
into the sand sculptures of the yellow desert. The wind moaned in their faces, blowing into the city,
whining around jagged buildings and through black holes that had once been windows.
Into the airlock quickly, for night was falling.
The outside port hissed shut. The dry air of Centaurus Four was pumped out, given back to a world
that no longer needed it. The clean, slightly damp air of the ship came in. The inner port opened, and they
were back in the ship.
Shake the sand from your boots, wash the sand from your body.
Put on clean clothes, clothes that do not smell of the dust and the centuries.
"That does it," Derryoc said. "Another world in the can."
"Little men, what now?" asked Nlesine.
It was difficult to joke, hard not to remember. It was always hard after a field party came back. What
were the odds now, the odds against their own survival?
A million to one?
A billion to one?
Try not to think about it. Do your job. Cry if you must. Laugh if you can.
"I don't wish to conceal anything from you," the Captain said. He looked at each of them in turn. "We
had trouble coming out of the field for this landing. We may have trouble again."
No one said anything.
"We'll have to start home soon, regardless," the Captain said. "The only question is, do we quit now
or do we try once more?"
Silence.
"You decide, Captain," Hafij said finally.
"Is that agreeable to all of you?"
Whether or not it was agreeable, no one spoke out against it.
"Very well," the Captain said. His short, taut body turned back to the control panel. "We'll try again.
Hafij, stand by to lift ship. Seyehi, compute our course for the nearest G sequence star. We blast in thirty
minutes."
They were slow minutes.
The ship that had brought life briefly again to Centaurus Four stood poised in the desert sands, folded
in a warm summer night. A city that had lost its dreams was only a deeper darkness beneath the stars.
The wind whined across the dunes, calling, calling.
A thrust of white flame, boiling.
A crash of thunder, shattering the silence, then hushed to a rumble that receded toward the stars.
The long silence came again.
The ship was gone.


SEVEN