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

was up to him to find out, and that was why he was here at ML-441, and he was getting exactly nowhere
in his search.

He stretched wearily, a stocky, broad-shouldered man in jacket slacks, looking more rumpled than a
Star Survey captain should look. He asked, тАЬWhat is it, Kwolek?"
Kwolek's round red face was worried. тАЬNothing's happened. But that's what makes me uneasy. Not one
of those people have come near us all dayтАФbut they keep watching us from the edge of their town."

Harlow came alert. тАЬN'Kann hasn't sent any word?"

"No.тАЭ And Kwolek added, тАЬYou ask me, those saffron so-and-sos have just been stalling you."

Harlow grunted. тАЬYou may be right. But I'll wait till sunset. If he doesn't send a message, I'll go and have
it out with him."

"It's your neck,тАЭ said Kwolek, a characteristic fine, free lack respect. тАЬBut they look kind of ugly to me."

Harlow went through the narrow metal corridors and out of the lock, stepping onto withered,
orange-colored grass. The heat and glare, reflected by the shining metal flank of the Thetis, hit him like a
blow.

A dull-red sun glared from low in the rosy sky. It was not a very big or important star. It had no name,
only a number in the Star Survey catalogues. But it had two planets, of which this was the innermost, and
it was a big enough sun to make this world hot and humid and slightly unbearable.

The orange-colored grassy plain on which the Thetis had landed ten days before rolled gently away to
hills crowned by yellow forests. But only a mile away upon the plain rose the strange crimson stone town
of the people who called themselves the Ktashas in their own language. The red light of the setting sun
painted their weird monolithic city an even deeper crimson.

Harlow could see the gay-colored short robes of the golden-skinned people who stood in irregular rows
at the edge of the town, and stared toward the Thetis.

"What gets me,тАЭ said Kwolek, тАЬis that they're so blasted much like us."

He had followed Harlow out of the ship, and so had Garcia, the Third Officer, a young Mexican whose
trimness was a constant reproach to Harlow and Kwolek. The Star Survey was strictly UN, and the
Thetis had a dozen different nations represented in its crew.

"I should have thought you would have got over your surprise at that, by now,тАЭ said Garcia.

Kwolek shrugged. тАЬI don't believe I'll ever get over it. It was too big a shock."

Yes, thought Harlow, that had been the first surprise men had got when, after the first trips to the
disappointingly lifeless nearer planets, they had got to other stars. The discovery that an Earth-type
world would usually have human and animal life reasonably close to the Terran had been unexpected. But
then the quick-following discovery that the old Arrhenius theory had been correct, that there were spores
of life in deep space, had explained it. Wherever those spores had come from, whatever faraway
fountainhead of life, they were identical and when they fell upon a world like Earth they had quite
naturally developed the same general types of life.