"Jack Williamson - The Ultimate Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

could be repeopled by the colonies.”
“So you dug us up for nothing?”
“If you knew what I have done,” Pen leaned and reached
as if to hug him, but he shrank farther away. “It wasn’t easy!
We’ve had to invent and improvise. We had to test the tissue
cells still preserved in the cryostat, and build new equipment
in the maternity lab. A complex system. It had to be tested.”
He smiled down into Tanya’s beaming devotion. “The tests
have turned out well.”
“So we are just an experiment?”
“Aren’t you glad to be alive?”
“Maybe,” Casey muttered bitterly. “If I can get off the
Moon. I don’t want to sit here till I die, waiting for nothing at
all?”
Looking uncomfortable, Pen just reached down to lift
Tanya up in his arms.
“We were meant for more than that,” Casey told him. “I
want a life.”
“Please, my dear boy, you must try to understand.”
Patiently, Uncle Pen shook his furry head. “The station is a
precious historic monument, our sole surviving relic of the
early Earth and early man. You are part of it. I’m sorry if you
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 The Ultimate Earth
by Jack Williamson


take that for a misfortune, but there is certainly no place for
you on Earth.”




11
 The Ultimate Earth
by Jack Williamson




2.


Sandor Pen kept coming to the Moon as we grew up,
though not so often. He brought tantalizing gifts. Exotic fruits
that had to be eaten before they spoiled. New games and
difficult puzzles. Little holo cubes that had held living pictures
of us, caught us year after year as we grew up from babies in
the maternity lab. He was always genial and kind, though I
thought he came to care less for us as we grew older.