"Campbell, John W Jr - Arcot, Wade and Morey 03 - Invaders from the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"weight" for the foods and materials in it, made eating of food a less
difficult task. Expertly, he maneuvered himself to the guide rail near
the center of the room, and caught the spiral. Braking himself into
motion, he soon glided down its length, and landed on his feet. He bent
and flexed his muscles, waiting for the now-busied assistant to get to
the floor and reply.

"They gave us two pounds extra. Lord only knows why. Must expect us to
clean up on some fleet. That makes four pound rolls left, untouched, and
two thirds of the original pound. We've been here fifteen days, and have
six more to go. The main driving power rolls have about the same amount
left, and three pound rolls in each reserve bin," replied Red, holding a
curiously moving coffee pot that strove to adjust itself to rapidly
changing air velocities as it neared the center of the room.

"Sounds like a fleet's power stock. Martian lead or the terrestrial
isotope?" asked Evans, tasting warily a peculiar dish before him. "Say,
this is energy food. I thought we didn't get any more till Saturday."
The change from the energy-less, flavored pastes that made up the
principal bulk of a space-pilot's diet, to prevent over-eating, when no
energy was used in walking in the weightless ship, was indeed a welcome
change.

"Uh-huh. I got hungry. Any objections?" grinned the Irishman.

"None!" replied Evans fervently, pitching in with a will.

Seated at the controls once more, he snapped the little switch that
caused the screen to glow with flashing, swirling colors as the
telectroscope apparatus came to life. A thousand tiny points of flame
appeared scattered on a black field with a suddenness that made them
seem to snap suddenly into being. Points, tiny dimensionless points of
light, save one, a tiny disc of blue-white flame, old Sol from a
distance of close to one billion miles, and under slight reverse
magnification. The skillful hands at the controls were turning
adjustments now, and that disc of flame seemed to leap toward him with a
hundred light-speeds, growing to a disc as large as a dime in an
instant, while the myriad points of the stars seemed to scatter like
frightened chickens, fleeing from the growing sun, out of the screen.
Other points, heretofore invisible, appeared, grew, and rushed away.

The sun shifted from the center of the screen, and a smaller
reddish-green disc came into view--a planet, its atmosphere coloring the
light that left it toward the red. It rushed nearer, grew larger. Earth
spread as it took the center of the screen. A world, a portion of a
world, a continent, a fragment of a continent as the magnification
increased, boundlessly it seemed.

Finally, New York spread across the screen; New York seen from the air,
with a strange lack of perspective. The buildings did not seem all to