"Tom Godwin - The Cold Equations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godwin Tom)

know whether she should put in clothes for a cold world or a hot one. The Gern commander had said the
Rejects would be left on an Earth-type planet but where could it be? The Dunbar Expedition had
explored across five hundred light-years of space and had found only one Earth-type world: Athena.
The Gerns were almost to her door when she had finished and she heard them enter the
compartments across from her own. There came the hard, curt questions and the command:
"OutsideтАФhurry!" A woman said something in pleading question and there was the soft thud of a blow
and the words: "OutsideтАФdo not ask questions!" A moment later she heard the woman going down the
corridor, trying to hold back her crying.
Then the Gerns were at her own door.
She held Billy's hand and waited for them with her heart hammering. She held her head high and
composed herself with all the determination she could muster so that the arrogant Gerns would not see
that she was afraid. Billy stood beside her as tall as his five years would permit, his teddy bear under his
arm, and only the way his hand held to hers showed that he, too, was scared.
The door was flung open and two Gerns strode in.
They were big, dark men, with powerful, bulging muscles. They surveyed her and the room with a
quick sweep of eyes that were like glittering obsidian, their mouths thin, cruel slashes in the flat, brutal
planes of their faces.
"Your name?" snapped the one who carried a sheaf of occupation records.
"It's"тАФshe tried to swallow the quaver in her voice and make it cool and unfrightenedтАФ"Irene Lois
HumboltтАФMrs. Dale Humbolt."
The Gern glanced at the papers. "Where is your husband?"
"He was in the X-ray room atтАФ"
"You are a Reject. OutтАФdown the corridor with the others."
"My husbandтАФwill he be aтАФ"
"Outside!"
It was the tone of voice that had preceded the blow in the other compartment and the Gern took a
quick step toward her. She seized the two bags in one hand, not wanting to release Billy, and swung
back to hurry out into the corridor. The other Gern jerked one of the bags from her hand and flung it to
the floor. "Only one bag per person," he said, and gave her an impatient shove that sent her and Billy
stumbling through the doorway.
She became part of the Rejects who were being herded like sheep down the corridors and into the
port airlock. There were many children among them, the young ones frightened and crying, and often with
only one parent or an older brother or sister to take care of them. And there were many young ones who
had no one at all and were dependent upon strangers to take their hands and tell them what they must do.
When she was passing the corridor that led to the X-ray room she saw a group of Rejects being
herded up it. Dale was not among them and she knew, then, that she and Billy would never see him
again.
***
"Out from the shipтАФfasterтАФfasterтАФ"
The commands of the Gern guards snapped like whips around them as she and the other Rejects
crowded and stumbled down the boarding ramp and out onto the rocky ground. There was the pull of a
terrible gravity such as she had never experienced and they were in a bleak, barren valley, a cold wind
moaning down it and whipping the alkali dust in bitter clouds. Around the valley stood ragged hills, their
white tops laying out streamers of wind-driven snow, and the sky was dark with sunset.
"Out from the shipтАФfasterтАФ"
It was hard to walk fast in the high gravity, carrying the bag in one hand and holding up all of Billy's
weight she could with the other.
"They lied to us!" a man beside her said to someone. "Let's turn and fight. Let's takeтАФ"
A Gern blaster cracked with a vivid blue flash and the man plunged lifelessly to the ground. She
flinched instinctively and fell over an unseen rock, the bag of precious clothes flying from her hand. She