"Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

pressure. I experienced only an increasing exhilaration and a delightful effervescence of thought. The extraordinary
brilliance of the stars excited me. For, whether through the absence of obscuring air, or through my own increased
sensitivity, or both, the sky had taken on an unfamiliar aspect. Every star had seemingly flared
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up into higher magnitude. The heavens blazed. The major
stars were like the headlights of a distant car. The Milky Way, no longer watered down with darkness, was an
encircling, granular river of light.
Presently, along the Planet's eastern limb, now far below me, there appeared a faint line of luminosity; which, as I
continued to soar, warmed here and there to orange and red. Evidently I was traveling not only upwards but
eastwards, and swinging round into the day. Soon the sun leapt into view, devouring the huge crescent of dawn with
its brilliance. But as I sped on, sun and planet were seen to drift apart, while the thread of dawn thickened into a misty
breadth of sunlight. This increased, like a visibly waxing moon, till half the planet was illuminated. Between the areas of
night and day, a belt of shade, warm-tinted, broad as a sub-continent, now marked the area of dawn. As I continued to
rise and travel eastwards, I saw the lands swing westward along with the day, till I was over the Pacific and high noon.
The Earth appeared now as a great bright orb hundreds of times larger than the full moon. In its center a dazzling
patch of light was the sun's image reflected in the ocean. The planet's circumference was an indefinite breadth of
luminous haze, fading into the surrounding blackness of space. Much of the northern hemisphere, tilted somewhat
toward me, was an expanse of snow and cloud-tops. I could trace parts of the outlines of Japan and China, their vague
browns and greens indenting the vague blues and grays of the ocean. Toward the equator, where the air was clearer,
the ocean was dark. A little whirl of brilliant cloud was perhaps the upper surface of a hurricane. The Philippines and
New Guinea were pre-cisely mapped. Australia faded into the hazy southern limb.
The spectacle before me- was strangely moving. Personal anxiety was blotted out by wonder and admiration; for the
sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacrous, it was an opal. No,
it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned coloring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy
and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never
before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.
I reflected that not one of the visible features of this celestial and living gem revealed the presence of man.
Dis-played before me, though invisible, were some of the most congested centers of human population. There below
me lay
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huge industrial regions, blackening the air with smoke. Yet all this thronging life and humanly momentous enterprise
had made no mark whatever on the features of the planet. From this high look-out the Earth would have appeared no
different before the dawn of man. No visiting angel, or ex-plorer from another planet, could have guessed that this
bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

CHAPTER Ï

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

WHILE I was thus contemplating my native planet, I contin-ued to soar through space. The Earth was visibly
shrinking into the distance, and as I raced eastwards, it seemed to be rotating beneath me. All its features swung
westwards, till presently sunset and the Mid-Atlantic appeared upon its eastern limb, and then the night. Within a few
minutes, as it seemed to me, the planet had become an immense half-moon. Soon it was a misty, dwindling crescent,
beside the sharp and minute crescent of its satellite.
With amazement I realized that I must be traveling at a fantastic, a quite impossible rate. So rapid was my progress
that I seemed to be passing through a constant hail of meteors. They were invisible till they were almost abreast of me;
for they shone only by reflected sunlight, appearing for an instant only, as streaks of light, like lamps seen from an
express train. Many of them I met in head-on collision, but they made no impression on me. One huge irregular bulk of
rock, the size of a house, thoroughly terrified me. The illu-minated mass swelled before my gaze, displayed for a