"Lester Del Rey - Return Engagement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

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RETURN ENGAGEMENT By Lester Del Rey

IT WAS later than Daniel Shawn had thought when they filially came out of the little farm house and
headed for the big car of Tommy Rogers. It was almost sundown. And there had been a light rain.

He took a slow breath, almost tasting the vigour of the air.

Strange that it should be late, though. Time had seemed to go so slowly. The whole visit of Professor
Rogers had been a mistake that was hard on both of them. Now it was ending clumsily, as it had begun
and continued in awkwardness. Once Tommy had been his friend. But that was before Tommy went into
Administration and Shawn had given it all up to come back here to the little Minnesota farm where he
had been born.

'A rainbow!' Tommy exclaimed suddenly. 'I haven't seen one in years.'

'Nor missed it, I'll warrant,' Shawn guessed, raising his eyes to see it. It lay in the gap between the locust
trees, adding a jewelled light to their dark greenness.

Tommy laughed his administrator's unoffended laugh and glanced back over the little farmyard before
climbing into the car. 'What do you find here, Dan? Kerosene lamps, outdoor plumbing, not even a
radio. I still say it's no place for you -when you could take over the Chair of History if you'd be sensible.'

'I was born here,' Shawn replied, evading the part of the question he didn't want to answer.

' But that was forty-five years ago!'

Shawn nodded. 'Yes. And sometimes, I think, so was the reality of myself. Let it be, Tommy, and I'll
ride into Utica with you.'

Tommy couldn't let it go, of course. There was that in the

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man which hated any way of life he could not understand. Maybe that was why he'd once studied
sociology, only to find that the science could never supply enough answers. He repeated his question as
the motor started.

'I don't know,' Shawn answered slowly, fumbling for his pipe as he tried again to answer it to himself.
'Something I almost saw as a child and then lost. Maybe all of us lost it once. That's why I turned to
history, to find where it went. But I never found it. You used to do a lot of reading once, Tommy. You
tell me. What was in Spencer, in Coleridge a little, in Orlando - only like an echo, but now it's gone from
all our writing.'

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