"Eric Frank Russel - Mesmerica" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

MESMERICA

I had counted on twelve well-earned months amid the
soothingly familiar surroundings of Earth, but this was
another simple. sum that added up wrong. Some infernal
nosey-poke in an observatory saw fit to convince the powers-
that-be that possible pay-dirt existed in the region of
Cassiopeia. Whereupon a fist-full of telegrams went to all
the tried and trusted suckers requesting the pleasure of
their heart's blood.

Mine came at three o'clock in a warm, mellow afternoon
when I was busily occupied rocking on the verandah. Let
me tell you that's no sort of time or place in which to view
with approval an invitation to throw away one's arms and
legs. I felt like telling the bearer where to put his message
except that it wasn't his fault. So I read it and tore it up
and said to hell with it and went on rocking with my eyes
closed. Next day I packed and departed east to swallow the
bait solely because I lacked the moral courage to refuse it.
I hadn't enough guts to be a coward.

So that's why for the umpteenth time I stood by a port
moodily watching a new world swell into gigantic view.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm the sight became so absorbing
that I almost forgot to jump into harness before the
Marathon played its Flettner trick preparatory to landing.
As it was, I made it in the nick of time. Came the
usual feeling of being turned inside-out and we were there.

My proper post was in the armoury, and there I stayed
while in the main cabin they chose the names of those
whose backsides were to be offered for any alien kicks that
might be coming. After previous experiences there wasn't
quite the same bumptious enthusiasm for hitting the dirt
without care, permission or weapons. Leastways, nobody
beat McNulty to the mark by crawling out through the
tubes this time.

The nearest observation-port framed a mass of vegetable
growths of every imaginable description. They had one
uncommon feature that struck me immediately, namely,
that nothing was tangled around anything else. Tall or
short, slender or wide-spreading, each growth stood in its
own appropriate plot of ground and let a thin spray of
sunlight reach the earth between its neighbours and itself.
A jungle that wasn't a jungle. One could stroll through it
without trouble so far as obstacles to one's feet were
concerned, though there might well be other and more
effective forms of opposition.