"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 27 - Birthplace of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

man-made structure. There were ominous
gaps in that diagram and Garrand was
painfully aware of them. He made his
calculations and set his ship down well
beyond the outer periphery of defenses
marked on the chart.
His landing was a clumsy nervous one.
White pumice-dust burst upward around
the hull and settled slowly back again.
Garrand cut his jets and sat for a moment
looking out across Tycho, all ringed
around in the distance with cliffs and spires
and pinnacles of blasted rock that glittered
in the light. There was no sign of the
structure indicated on the chart. It was all
below ground. Even its observatory dome
was set flush, reflecting the Sun's
unsoftened glare no more than the
surrounding plain.
G
2
RESENTLY Garrand rose, moving
with the stiff reluctance of a man
going to the gallows. He checked over the
bulky shapes of a considerable mass of
equipment. His examination was minute
and he made one or two readjustments.
Then he struggled into a pressure-suit and
opened the airlock. The air went out with a
whistling rush and after that there was no
sound, only the utter silence of a world that
has heard nothing since it was made.
Working in that vacuum Garrand
carried out a light hand-sledge and set it in
the dust. Then he brought out the bulky
pieces of equipment and loaded them onto
it. He was able to do this alone because of
the weak gravitation and when he was
through he was able for the same reason to
tow the sledge behind him.
He set off across the crater. The glare
was intense. Sweat gathered on him and
ran in slow trickles down his face. He
suffered in the heavy armor, setting one
weighted boot before the other, with the
little puffs of dust rising and falling back at
every step, hauling the sledge behind him.
And fear grew steadily in him as he went
on.
He knew--all the System knew--that