"Blish, James - Cities In Flight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

(c) A LIFE FOIL THE STARS 131


(c) EARTHMAN COME HOME 235


(c) THE TRIUMPH OF TIME 466


(c) AFTEI1WOIH~
by Richard U. Mullen 597


THEY
SHALL
HAVE
STARS

And death shall have no dominion
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot...
DYLAN THOMAS



"...While Vegan civilization was undergoing this pecu. liar decline in influence, while at the height of its political and military power, the culture which was eventually to replace it was beginning 'to unfold. The reader should bear in mind that at that time nobody had ever heard of the Earth, and the planet's sun, Sol, was known only as an undistinguished type G0 star in the Draco sector. It is possible-although highly unlikely-that Vega knew that the Earth had developed space flight some time before the events we have just reviewed here. It was, however, only local interplanetary ifight; up to this period, Earth had taken no part in Galactic history. It was inevitable, however, that Earth should make the two crucial discoveries which would bring it on to that starry stage. We may be very sure that Vega, had she known that Earth was to be her successor, would have exerted all of her enormous might to prevent it. That Vega failed to do so is evidence enough that she had no real idea of what was happening on Earth at this time
-ACREFF-MONALES: The Milky Way:

Five Cultural Portraits


BOOK ONE


PRELUDE: Washington


We do not believe any group of men adequate enough-pr wise enough to operate without scrutiny ot without cri~i~. cism. We know that the only way to avoid error is tO detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will.' flourish and subvert. -
-J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER



Tun sii~nows flickered on the walls to his left and right, just inside the edges of his vision, like shapes stepping quickly back into invisible doorways. Despite his bone-deep weariness, they made him nervous, almost made him wish that Dr. Corsi would put out the fire. Nevertheless, he remained staring into the leaping orange ~1ight, feeling the heat tightening his cheeks and the skin around his eyes, and soaking into his chest.
Corsi stirred a little beside him, but Senator Wagoner's own weight on the sofa seemed to have been increasing ever since he had first sat down. He felt dxained, lethargic, as old and heavy as a stone despite his forty-eight years; it had been a bad day in a long succession of bad days. Good days in Washington were the ones you slept through.
Next to him Corsi, for all that he was twenty years older, formerly Director of the Bureau of Standards, formerly Director of the World Health Organization, and presently head man of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (usually referred to in Washington as "the left-wing Triple A-S"), felt as light and restless and quick as a chameleon.
"I suppose you know what a chance you're taking, coming to see me," Corsi said in his dry, whispery voice. "I wpuldn't be in Washington at all if I didn't think the