"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора

officials become responsible for the cruel enslavement of the entire
populace, and instigate a war in which real people by the thousands die
terrible and agonizing deaths, the clown has set fire to the circus tent,
and nothing he and his kind are or do from then on can be the least bit
funny. There is a battle scene in this book which brings this out
unforgettably; I find myself enriched and grateful for it, and for another
beautiful Strugatsky novel.

Theodore Sturgeon
San Diego, California, 1977


PART ONE: ROBINSON CRUSOE

1.
Maxim opened the hatch, leaned out, and cautiously scanned the sky.
Low-lying and solid-looking, it lacked that airy transparency suggestive of
infinite space and a multitude of inhabited worlds; it was a real biblical
firmament, smooth and dense. Undoubtedly this firmament rested on the
powerful shoulders of a local Atlas. It glowed with a steady
phosphorescence. Maxim looked for the hole that his ship had pierced, but it
was gone; only two large dark blots floated at the zenith like dead bodies
in water. Flinging the hatch wide open, he jumped into the tall dry grass.
The dense hot air smelled of dust, rusted iron, trampled vegetation,
life. And of death, long past and incomprehensible. The grass was
waist-high. Nearby, dense bushes loomed darkly, and dreary gnarled trees
occasionally broke the landscape. It was almost as bright as a clear moonlit
night on Earth, but without Earth's moon shadows and hazy nocturnal
blueness. Everything was gray, dusty, and flat. The ship rested on the
bottom of an enormous hollow with sloping sides. The surrounding terrain
rose sharply toward a washed-out horizon; the landscape seemed strange
because nearby a broad, serene river flowed westward and apparently upward
along one slope.
Maxim walked in a circle around the ship, running his palm along its
cold damp side. Traces of the impact were where he had expected to find
them. There was a deep ugly dent under the sensory ring, sustained when the
ship was jolted suddenly and pitched to one side; the cyberpilot had felt
insulted and sulked, and Maxim had had to grab the controls quickly. The
jagged hole next to the right porthole was made ten seconds later when the
ship pitched forward. Maxim looked at the zenith again. The dark blots were
scarcely visible now. A meteorite attack in the stratosphere? Probability -
zero point zero zero. But in space anything theoretically possible would
happen sooner or later.
Maxim returned to the cabin and switched on the automatic repair
controls and activated the field laboratory. Then he headed toward the
river. An adventure of sorts, but still routine. Monotonously routine. The
unexpected to be expected in the Independent Reconnaissance Unit. Landing
accidents, meteorite and radiation attacks - adventures of the body, merely
physical stuff.
The tall brittle grass rustled and crackled beneath his feet and