"William Tenn - The Liberation of Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

exposure of any part of its body to the intensely corrosive atmo-sphere of Earth? Surely the seamless,
barely translucent suits which our recent visi-tors had worn for every moment of their stay on our world
should have made us suspect a body chemistry developed from complex silicon compounds rather than
those of carbon?
Humanity hung its collective head and admitted that the suspicion had never occurred to it.
Well, the Troxxt admitted generously, we were extremely inexperienced and pos-sibly a little too
trusting. Put it down to that. Our naiveté, however costly to them—our liberators—would not be allowed
to deprive us of that complete citizenship which the Troxxt were claiming as the birthright of all.
But as for our leaders, our probably corrupted, certainly irresponsible leaders...


The first executions of U.N. officials, heads of states, and pre-Bengali interpreters as "Traitors to
Protoplasm"—after some of the lengthiest and most nearly-perfectly-fair trials in the history of
Earth—were held a week after G-J Day (Galaxy-Joining Day), the inspiring occasion on which—amidst
gorgeous ceremonies—Humanity was invited to join, first the Protoplasmic League and thence the New
and Demo-cratic Galactic Federation of All Species, All Races.
Nor was that all. Whereas the Dendi had contemptuously shoved us to one side as they went about
their business of making our planet safe for tyranny, and had—in all probability—built special devices
which made the very touch of their weapons fatal for us, the Troxxt—with the sincere friendliness which
had made their name a byword for democracy and decency wherever living creatures came together
among the stars—our Second Liberators, as we lovingly called them, actually preferred to have us help
them with the intensive, accelerating labor of planetary defense.
So humanity's intestines dissolved under the invisible glare of the forces used to assemble the new,
incredibly complex weapons; men sickened and died, in scrab-bling hordes, inside the mines which the
Troxxt had made deeper than any we had dug hitherto; men's bodies broke open and exploded in the
undersea oil-drilling sites which the Troxxt had declared were essential.
Children's schooldays were requested, too, in such collecting drives as "Platinum Scrap for
Procyon" and "Radioactive Debris for Deneb." Housewives also were im-plored to save on salt
whenever possible—this substance being useful to the Troxxt in literally dozens of incomprehensible
ways—and colorful posters reminded: "Don't salinate—sugarfy!"
And over all—courteously caring for us like an intelligent parent—were our mentors, taking their
giant supervisory strides on metallic crutches while their pale little bodies lay curled in the hammocks that
swung from each paired length of shining leg.
Truly, even in the midst of a complete economic paralysis caused by the concen-tration of all major
productive facilities on other-worldly armaments, and despite the anguished cries of those suffering from
peculiar industrial injuries which our medical men were totally unequipped to handle, in the midst of all
this mind-wrack-ing disorganization, it was yet very exhilarating to realize that we had taken our law-ful
place in the future government of the galaxy and were even now helping to make the Universe Safe for
Democracy.


But the Dendi returned to smash this idyll. They came in their huge, silvery space-ships, and the
Troxxt, barely warned in time, just managed to rally under the blow and fight back in kind. Even so, the
Troxxt ship in the Ukraine was almost immedi-ately forced to flee to its base in the depths of space. After
three days, the only Troxxt on Earth were the devoted members of a little band guarding the ship in
Australia. They proved, in three or more months, to be as difficult to remove from the face of our planet
as the continent itself; and since there was now a state of close and hostile siege, with the Dendi on one
side of the globe and the Troxxt on the other, the battle assumed frightful proportions.
Seas boiled; whole steppes burned away; the climate itself shifted and changed under the grueling
pressure of the cataclysm. By the time the Dendi solved the prob-lem, the planet Venus had been blasted