"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

Grag swung wrathfully on the android. "Why,
you cockeyed rubber imitation of a man, if you
slander little Eek like that again, I'll --"
Captain Future and Joan, chuckling, left them to
the inevitable argument which might go on now for
an hour. It was the favorite method of passing time
for Grag and Otho, to find new insults for each
other. Curt and the girl went back to a deck-
window out of earshot.
The silence of the night watch reigned over the
ship. Its cycs and rocket-tubes had been cut, for its
speed of inertia was now great. In an unnatural
stillness the Vulcan rushed on and on through the
vast. star-decked vault toward the distant green
speck of Neptune.
The vista from their window was a magnificent
one. The golden eyes of a million million suns
steadily watched the soundless rushing ship. Jupiter
was a white blob away back to the left, and the sun
itself was only a little, fiery disk far astern. Far out
in the void, they could glimpse a tiny red light
creeping Sunward across the starry background.
"That will be the bi-weekly Pluto-Earth liner,"
remarked Curt Newton.
Joan's brown eyes watched wistfully. "Don't you
wish we were aboard her, Curt? There'll be lights,
music, dancing."
Curt looked down at her. "What's the matter,
Joan? Is this trip getting on your nerves?"
She smiled ruefully. "A little, I'm afraid. We're
so different from any other ship, with our cargo of
human misery and hate. I wake up sometimes
dreaming that the Vulcan will sail on like this
forever."
Curt nodded soberly. "Like the dead space-ship
in Oliver Owen's poem. Remember?
" 'Darkling she drifts toward the
outer dark,
Silently falling, into eternity.'"
"Beautiful, but depressing," Joan said, with a
little shudder. She turned away. "I'm going to turn
in, too. I have the guard-command in the next
watch."
Captain Future went back to his own little cabin.
The Brain was there, his square case resting
quiescent upon a small table. But Simon did not
look up or speak when he entered. His lens-eyes
stared unseeingly.
Curt knew that the Brain was deep in one of his
unfathomable reveries of speculation. Simon's cold,