"Allen Steele - The Death Of Captain Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

Allen Steele

With the publication of his novelOrbital Decay-about the engineering and political problems that zero-g
“beamjacks” overcome to build satellites in outer space-and its sequelLunar Descent, Allen Steele earned
comparisons to Robert Heinlein and established his credentials as a promising new writer of hard science
fiction. Since then, Steele has set his novels aboard space stations (Clarke County, Space;A King of
Infinite Space), in undersea research facilities (Oceanspace), and in an earthquake-devastated near-future
St. Louis (The Jericho Iteration).The Tranquillity Alternativeis set at a civilian-manned moon base in an
alternate world where manned space flight occurred in 1984 and lunar colonization took place shortly
thereafter. A prodigious writer of short fiction, some of which has been collected in All-American Alien
Boyand Rude Astronauts, Steele is the author of the Hugo Award-winning stories “The Good Rat,” “The
Death of Captain Future,” and “Where Angels Fear to Tread.”

- Introduction taken from "The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century" - ed. Harry Turtledove



THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN FUTURE



Allen Steele

The name of Captain Future, the supreme foe of all evil and evildoers, was known to
every inhabitant of the Solar System.

That tall, cheerful, red-haired young adventurer of ready laugh and flying fists was the
implacable Nemesis of all oppressors and exploiters of the System’s human and planetary
races. Combining a gay audacity with an unswervable purposefulness and an
unparalleled mastery of science, he had blazed a brilliant trail across the nine worlds in
defense of the right.

-EDMONDHAMILTON,

Captain Future and the Space Emperor(1940)



THIS IS THE TRUE STORYof how Captain Future died.

We were crossing the inner belt, coasting toward our scheduled rendezvous with Ceres, when the message
was received by the ship’s comlink.

“Rohr . . . ? Rohr, wake up, please.”

The voice coming from the ceiling was tall, dark, and handsome, sampled from one of the old Hercules
vids in the captain’s collection. It penetrated the darkness of my quarters on the mid-deck where I lay
asleep after standing an eight-hour watch on the bridge.

I turned my head to squint at the computer terminal next to my bunk. Lines of alphanumeric code scrolled