"Edmond Hamilton - Calling Captain Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

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 Edmond Hamilton тАУ CALLING CAPTAIN FUTURE

gether, seeming suspended magically in nothingness at gasso."
the edge of the vast wreck-pack, with stars above them His gray eyes kindled with scientific interest. "We'll
and stars below them. Then Curt drew the impeller-tube take a look. Come on, Joan."
from the belt of his suit. He fired it, and its tiny rocket- They started toward the enigmatic cylinder. But they
blast sent him gliding toward the nearest wreck. Joan stopped again, before they reached it. stricken with
followed, using her impeller also. Curt bumped against wonder by the appearance of the craft that floated next
the side of the wreck. It was a cargo-ship that bore the to it.
name, "Thenia, Venus," on its bows. They clambered

T
back along the top of its torpedo-shaped hull, and found HIS was a space ship of ridiculously small size and
the whole stern was crushed as though by a giant hand. flimsy appearance. It was crudely designed, with
"A meteor did that," Curt told the girl through the projecting rocket-tubes of an ancient, inefficient type.
suit-phone. "No use looking in it for good cyclotrons. The little vessel was the most antiquated and obsolete
Come on." of any they had seen yet.
The next wreck, a big liner, was the "Paris. Earth." It "Why, it looks like one of the first space ships that
seemed undamaged, and Curt and Joan managed to en- was ever built!" Joan cried. "Could men ever have
ter it through an air-lock whose doors were wide open. sailed space in a craft like that?"
Inside the liner, an unnerving scene met their eyes. Curt's tanned face was suddenly tense and strange.
The enclosed decks were strewn with dead passengers, "I've an idea I know what craft this is," he said.
Martians, Venusians, Earthmen and men and women of "Yes, I'm right-look at the name on its bows!"
other races, lay about, stiff and frozen. Yet, perfectly The name was Pioneer III.
preserved, they all seemed sleeping. "Pioneer III?" cried Joan. "Why, that was the ship
"What happened to this ship?" Joan whispered, her of Mark Carew, the first man ever to тАУ"
face white inside her transparent helmet. "The first man ever to sail beyond Jupiter," Captain
'They must have blundered into the Sargasso and Future finished softly, staring almost in reverence at the
then run out of air," Curt muttered. "Looks like some- clumsy little craft. "Mark Carew, the second great trail-
body here opened the air-lock doors finally, to bring a blazer of space тАУ the man who first visited Saturn and
quick, merciful death." Uranus and Neptune, and who was lost in space in a lat-
Curt went back down to the cyclotron-rooms. The er voyage. And this is where he was lost, here in the
great, cylindrical generators of atomic power were un- Sargasso."
harmed. The mystery of the interstellar cylinder was forgot-
"So far so good. We've got to have more." ten for the moment in the intense interest aroused by
They entered an old-looking liner of the type built this new find. Curt and Joan pried with a bar until they
long before, that had been attacked by space-pirates. Its were able to enter the little Pioneer III.
strong-room had been looted, its officers blasted down, The ancient little ship had carried a crew of only six
and then the attackers had punctured its hull by atom- men. They lay dead, frozen, eternally preservedтАУ those
gun fire, slaying all in it. Earthmen who long and long ago had roared out into
"I never realized so many horrible things had hap- the void in their tiny craft, to blaze the trail for all those
pened in the System in the past," Joan said, shivering. who would come after.
'This particular thing happened a long time in the Awedly, Captain Future stepped gently toward the
past," Captain Future remarked. .'The ships here in the control-cubby in the prow. There, in the pilot's chair,
center of the wreck-pack are all old ones. We'd better sat the frozen body of a dark, thin-faced man of middle-
work back out toward the edge of the pack, where we'll age. He sat there, his worn face seeming almost lifelike,
be more likely to find good cyclotrons in the newer his open black eyes staring out eternally through the
ships"' window of his little ship.