"Jack Williamson - Eldren 1 - Lifeburst" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

the blue of the sky and the flying thing she called a gull—he used to shiver with awe, trying to
imagine that impossible world below the skyweb.

Hope was like a hunger in him, a burning urge to get back Sunside, to see the marvels his mother had
known, to ride the skywires and explore the old Earth. Perhaps he could find his father and learn who
he was born to be. Secretly he always believed his destined future would be there among the Sunfolk,
enjoying all the splendor and the power of the Company.


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Jack%20Williamson%20-%20Eldren%201%20-%20Lifeburst.html (18 of 285)10-12-2006 0:56:47
Jack Williamson - Eldren 1 - Lifeburst (v1.1)


Once he told his mother he wanted to go home.

“No!” Her breath drew in and her thin face twisted. “Never!”

That was all she said. He never spoke to her again about that secret dream, or even asked her about
anything Sunside. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he saw that she was trying to forget something very
painful.

Only three weeks old when they got to the station, he grew up there, a prisoner in the narrow plastic
rooms and tunnels that held air people could breathe. There was no child-sized space gear, and he
never got outside.

Listening to others who would talk of the strange old Earth and all the far-off Sunside worlds, he felt
more and more afraid he would never get there. Yet most of the time he wasn’t unhappy. There were
only a few children at the station. His mother said all of them were spoiled.

There was school, a dozen kids of every age, in just one frost-walled cave-room. The instructors were
staff people, teaching how to stay alive in the halo. How not to be killed by the airless emptiness and
the terrible cold outside the thin station walls. How to run the machines that had to keep running to
keep anybody alive.

In school and out, his best teacher was Kerry McLenn. An old hand at the station, Kerry had come out
with Admiral Fernando Kwan on the discovery expedition. Quin’s mother married him the year he
was four. To be his new father, she said.

“He isn’t,” Quin protested. “He never will be. My real father—”

His mother’s hurt face stopped him. Kerry grinned and boxed him gently and promised that they
would be friends. They always were, but Quin could never call him father.

They lived under the ice, in places lined with plastic foam to keep the cold out and the precious air
sealed inside. The floors had velfast carpets that let them walk in boots with velfast soles. Weighing
only a few ounces, he could fly down the tunnels when he liked, never touching anything.

In most of the station, the labs and shops and processors, kids weren’t wanted. People were too busy.
The pit and refinery were too dangerous. The ship and the power tunnels were forbidden territory.
But even when he was small Kerry would take him along to the hydroponic gardens when he was