"Bradbury, Ray - The Illustrated Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

УIТve got myself into a meteor swarm, some little asteroids.Ф

УMeteors?Ф

УI think itТs the Myrmidone cluster that goes out past Mars and in toward Earth once every five years. IТm right in the middle. ItТs like a big kaleidoscope. You get all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes. God, itТs beautiful, all that metal.Ф

Silence.

УIТm going with them,Ф said Stone. УTheyТre taking me off with them. IТll be damned.Ф He laughed.

Hollis looked to see, but saw nothing. There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with GodТs voice mingling among the crystal fires. There was a kind of wonder and imagination in the thought of Stone going off in the meteor swarm, out past Mars for years and coming in toward Earth every five years, passing in and out of the planetТs ken for the next million centuries, Stone and the Myrmidone cluster eternal and unending, shifting and shaping like the kaleidoscope colors when you were a child and held the long tube to the sun and gave it a twirl.

УSo long, Hollis.Ф StoneТs voice, very faint now. УSo long.Ф

УGood luck,Ф shouted Hollis across thirty thousand miles.

УDonТt be funny,Ф said Stone, and was gone.

The stars closed in.

Now all the voices were fading, each on his own trajectory, some to Mars, others into farthest space. And Hollis himself . . . He looked down. He, of all the others, was going back to Earth alone.

УSo long.Ф

УTake it easy.Ф

УSo long, Hollis.Ф That was Applegate.

The many good-bys. The short farewells. And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying. Applegate was now no more than a finger blown from the parent body, no longer to be despised and worked against. The brain was exploded, and the senseless, useless fragments of it were far scattered. The voices faded and now all of space was silent. Hollis was alone, falling.

They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred deep. There went the captain to the Moon; there Stone with the meteor swarm; there Stimson; there Applegate toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking pattern for so long, hurled apart.

And I? thought Hollis. What can I do? Is there anything I can do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If only I could do one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these years and didnТt even know was in me! But thereТs no one here but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You canТt. Tomorrow night IТll hit EarthТs atmosphere.

IТll burn, he thought, and be scattered in ashes all over the continental lands. IТll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are ashes and theyТll add to the land.

He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.

When I hit the atmosphere, IТll burn like a meteor.

УI wonder,Ф he said, Уif anyoneТll see me?Ф



The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed. УLook, Mom, look! A falling star!Ф

The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois.

УMake a wish,Ф said his mother. УMake a wish.Ф