"Blish, James - Pheonix Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

jewelry found in deserted chambers, dug with gasping breath from red sand or
found discarded carelessly in once-dark corridors. The Martians, dead untold
centuries before his birth, had used no gold in architectural decoration. Only
in those ornaments.
And he had passed great frescoes, still brightly colored in the unmoving air of
Mars; and strange, chilling statues; and buildings which were taller in the
slighter gravitation of the planet than any imaginable Earth building; and he
had made hurried films and gone on in despairing duplication of man's endless
search for gold, now a symbol of life rather than mere greed.
And each month, if he was lucky, saw one more queerly wrought, alien gold
ornament added to the tiny pile in the cabin of the Icarus. The search never
ceased except from exhaustion. He had gasped, and lost precious perspiration in
the arid air, and been burned black and peeled acres of skin (which he ate, as
he ate his nail parings and anything else offering rare proteins), and grew a
little mad; and the stars looked down coldly, even in the vicious weak light of
the sun, and watched this human being, the only one on an entire world, grub for
gold in the ground like his brothers on Earth, and doubtless they did not
understand.
But that was all over now. Nine years' search for metal; one year drawing it
into wire, making proper connections, and repairing the guilty parachute. And
now behind him the roar of the rockets made the Icarus tremble, and Mars was a
rusty ball dwindling behind it, illusory "canals" coming gradually into view, as
it hurtled along Hohmann D toward the swelling blue star.
He stopped his constant pacing and pressed his nose for the hundredth time
against the green glass of the control window, polishing impatiently with his
ragged sleeve as his breath misted the view of the blue star. What would it be
like, being there again? There were so many things that might be different. What
had the Society thought when he had failed to return? Had they sent another
ship, later, one that had been lost somewhere in space, or burst in terrible
glory like poor Klaus? He thought not. The Icarus had devoured the Society's
last pitiful pennies, for Klaus' death had been expensive as well as tragic; the
Daedelus had been a much bigger ship than Marshall's. Probably they had waited
in dying hopefulness for a few years or so, and then, when the Earth and Mars
had moved away from each other, had gone back to the other walks of life whence
they had been summoned.
And Anne. Had she, perhaps, forgotten too, in those years when the gulf of space
had stretched between them? As ever the thought was a bright pain to him, and he
felt a momentary twinge of the old madness of Mars. Ten years was a long time
for a human woman to remain faithful. Pelleas and Melicent, yes--but they were
but fiction.
If she had waited, he was bringing her a better lover than she had known before.
He had been an eager, idealistic kid when he spurned his planet in fire, a kid
of twenty-two; he looked perhaps four years older now, thanks to the
preservative influence of that embalmed rusty planet, but he was hardened
physically to perfection; underweight, of course, but perfectly proportioned;
and those ten years of hell had forged the irresponsible Greg Marshall into
something finer than he had promised. He knew it without egotism, but with grim
pride, and was glad of it for her.
Yes, much might have changed upon the blue star, yet it was home, and paradise;
return there was resurrection from the tomb which was Mars. Those years had at