"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

1
EARTHMEN NO MORE
A Captain Future Novelet
By Edmond HAMILTON
When the Futuremen revived John Carey from his deep freeze,
he wanted to go home--but where in space was home ?
CHAPTER I
The Awakening
TILL and cold in its lightless vault of
bone, the brain stirred feebly. Slowly,
slowly, it began to wake and remember--
timeless memories, flowing across it in a
dark inchoate tide from nowhere into
nothingness.
He was alone in space. Quite alone,
floating, turning, drifting. He had no
destination and he was in no hurry. He had
lost the Sun and the planets. There were
not even any stars.
He did not worry. The dead do not
insist on stars. He had forgotten how he
came to die and he was glad.
After a long while, far distant in the
infinite night, he saw a tiny gleam. He
regarded it without curiosity or fear and
then he realized that some inexorable
current had caught him and was sweeping
him toward the light, hurling him at it in a
swift relentless rush. He knew that he did
not want to go to it--but there was no
escape.
The little point of light leaped and
spread into a sun, a nova, a shattering
glare. Terror overcame him. He clawed at
the comforting darkness as it fled past but
he could not hold onto it and it seemed to
him that he could hear the small thin
shrieking of his body against the void as it
was sucked into the devouring brilliance.
There was a face between him and the
light, huge and awesome. He cried out but
no sound came and then it was gone, the
light, the face, even himself, swallowed up
in the quiet night.
Memories--the aloneness, the
remembering, the timeless drift. A sound
like the rustle of far-off surf that boomed
louder and louder and became a voice
speaking out of the heavens, saying,
"Wake up, John Carey! Wake up!"