"Edmond Hamilton - The Godmen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

The Godmen occurs during the earlier days of this era, and tells of the problems that arise when
humankind first encounters a nonhuman intelligence. The Stars, My Brothers takes place several
centuries later, and shows how the question of humanity's relationship to alien races was finally
answeredтАФby a man from our own time! Together they point the way toward the concord among alien
races that produced the Era of the Federation and the United Worlds.

Jean Marie Stine

July 12, 2006


BOOK ONE
THE GODMEN


CHAPTER I
Break free, little Earthmen, break free of Sol and Earth!

He had broken free. Forgotten and petty now were the first feeble attempts, the Sputniks, the moon and
Mars rockets that had followed them, all those stumbling baby steps. Now, with the star-drive, man had
broken free and for the first time the stars were conqueredтАФ

And suddenly it seemed to Mark Harlow that all the universe was laughing at him, at the vanity of man, a
cosmic laughter ringing across the galaxies.

But you are not the first, little Earthmen! The Vorn did it long ago!

And the gargantuan laughter of that jest rocked and shook the constellations, and Harlow cried out in
disappointment and shame.

He cried out, and awoke.

He was not in space. He was in his bunk in the Thetis, and he was sweating, and Kwolek, his second
officer, was looking down at him in wonder.

"I came to wake you, sirтАФand you gave a yell."

The fading echoes of that cosmic laughter still rang mockingly in Harlow's ears. He got out of the bunk
and stood on the plastic deck and he was thinking.

"If it's true, it is a joke on all of us. And the joke may have cost Dundonald his life."

The Thetis rested quietly upon the soil of an alien planet, and alien pink sunlight came through the ports
of his little cabin. The small starship was a thing of Earth, and the nineteen men aboard it were men of
Earth. They had come far, and worked hard, and the feeling that it had never been done before had
sparked them all the way, and now if they found out they had been anticipated, how would they feel?

Harlow told himself to forget that; there was no use dwelling upon it. Dundonald had brooded too much
on that cosmic mystery, had gone forth to solve it, and where was Dundonald now? Where, indeed? It