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

“I’m sorry you can’t.” His face was firmly set, but a flush of
pleasure turned it a richer gold. “It’s to stand at the center of
our new historic memorial, located on the Australian
subcontinent. It presents our reconstruction of the prehistoric
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 The Ultimate Earth
by Jack Williamson


past. The whole story of the pre-impact planet and pre-
impact man.”
He paused to smile at Tanya. Flushed pink, she smiled
back at him.
“It’s really magnificent! Finding the lunar site was my
great good fortune, and working it has been my life for many
years. It has filled a gap in human history. Answered
questions that scholars had fought over for ages. You
yourselves have a place there, with a holographic diorama of
your childhood.”
Casey asked again why we couldn’t see it.
“Because you belong here.” Impatience edged his voice.
“And because of the charter that allowed us to work the site.
We agreed to restore the station to its original state, and to
import no genetic materials from it that might contaminate
the Earth. We are to leave the site exactly as it was before
the impact, protected and secured from any future trespass.”
We all felt sick with loss on the day he told us his work at
the site was done. As a farewell gift, he took us two by two to
orbit the Moon. Casey and I went up together, sitting behind
him in his tiny slipship. We had seen space and Earth from
the dome all our lives, but the flight was still an exciting
adventure.
The mirror hull was invisible from inside, so that our seats
seemed to float free in open space. The Moon’s gray
desolation spread wider beneath us, and dwindled again to a
bright bubble floating in a gulf of darkness. Though Pen
touched nothing I saw, the stars blazed suddenly brighter, the
Milky Way a broad belt of gem-strewn splendor all around us.
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 The Ultimate Earth
by Jack Williamson


The sun was dimmed and hugely magnified to let us see the
dark spots across its face.
Still he touched nothing and I felt no new motion, but now
Australia expanded. The deserts were gone. A long new sea
lay across the center of the continent, crescent-shaped and
vividly blue.
“The memorial.” He pointed to a broad tongue of green