"Jack Williamson - Star Bright" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

STAR BRIGHT
Argosy, November by Jack Williamson (1908- )

Jack Williamson has been witness to the development of modern science fiction as reader
writer, and scholar. He has produced a solid body of work spanning fifty years, and has had
little trouble in keeping up with the competition. Still writing today, he will always be
remembered for his "Legion of Space" and "Seetee" stories, although there is much more in his
canon, most notably THE HUMANOIDS (1949) and that wonderful fantasy, DARKER THAN
YOU THINK (1940, in book form 1948). The best of his short fiction is available in THE BEST
OF JACK WILLIAMSON, 1978.
Jack did not include this story in the latter collection, although he did select it for MY BEST
SCIENCE FICTION STORY in 1949. He should have, because even though tastes change, this is
a powerful story of hope, of desperation, and of a form of fulfillment.
(Once John Campbell took over Astounding and began to remold science fiction, many of the
star writers of the previous decade fell by the way. There was the kind of slaughter we associate
with the passing of the silents and the coming of the talkies. There were survivors, though, and
one of the most remarkable of these was Jack Williamson whose Legion of Space had dazzled my
teen-age years and who now went on to adapt himself, effortlessly, to Campbell's standards. IA)

Mr. Jason Peabody got off the street car. Taking a great, reieved breath of the open air, he
started walking up Bannister Hill. His worried eyes saw the first pale star come out of the tusk
ahead.
It made him grope back wistfully into the mists of childhood, for the magic of words he once
had known. He whispered the chant of power:

Star light, star bright,
First star I've seen tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

Mr. Peabody was a brown, bald little wisp of a man. Now defiantly erect, his thin shoulders
still betrayed the stoop they had got from twenty years of bending over adding machines and
ledgers. His usually meek face now had a hurt and desperate look.
"I wish—"
With his hopeful eyes on the star, Mr. Peabody hesitated. His harried mind went back to the
painful domestic scene from which he had just escaped. A wry little smile came to his troubled
face.
"I wish," he told the star, "that I could work miracles!" The star faded to a pale malevolent red
"You've got to work miracles," added Mr. Peabody, "to bring up a family on a bookkeeper's
pay. A family, that is, like mine."
 The star winked green with promise.
Mr. Peabody still owed thirteen thousand dollars on the little stucco house, two blocks off the
Locust Avenue car line: the payments were as easy as rent, and in ten more years it would be his
own. Ella met him at the door, this afternoon, with a moist kiss.
Ella was Mrs. Peabody. She was a statuesque blonde, an inch taller than himself, with a
remarkable voice. Her clinging kiss made him uneasy. He knew instantly, from twenty-two years
of experience, that it meant she wanted something.
"It's good to be home, dear." He tried to start a counter-campaign. "Things were tough at the
office today." His tired sigh was real enough. "Old Berg has fired until we're all doing two men's
work. I don't know who will be next."