"Edmond Hamilton - The Stars, My Brothers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

space. Alpha Centauri, Sirius and Altair were quickly visited."
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



THE STARS, MY BROTHERS


CHAPTER I
Something tiny went wrong, but no one ever knew whether it was in an electric relay or in the brain of the
pilot.

The pilot was Lieutenant Charles Wandek, UNRC, home address 1677 Anstey Avenue, Detroit. He did
not survive the crash of his ferry into Wheel Five. Neither did his three passengers, a young French
astrophysicist, an East Indian expert on magnetic fields, and a forty year old man from Philadelphia who
was coming out to replace a pump technician.

Someone else who did not survive was Reed Kieran, the only man in Wheel Five itself to lose his life.
Kieran, who was thirty-six years old, was an accredited scientist-employee of UNRC. Home address:
815 Elm Street, Midland Springs, Ohio.

Kieran, despite the fact that he was a confirmed bachelor, was in Wheel Five because of a woman. But
the woman who had sent him there was no beautiful lost love. Her name was Gertrude Lemmiken, she
was nineteen years old and overweight, with a fat, stupid face. She suffered from head colds and sniffed
constantly in the Ohio college classroom where Kieran taught Physics Two.

One March morning, Kieran could bear it no longer. He told himself, тАЬIf she sniffs this morning, I'm
through. I'll resign and join the UNRC."

Gertrude sniffed. Six months later, having finished his training for the United Nations Reconnaissance
Corps, Kieran shipped out for a term of duty in UNRC Space Laboratory Number 5, known more
familiarly as Wheel Five.

Wheel Five circled the Moon. There was an elaborate base on the surface of the Moon in this year
1981. There were laboratories and observatories there, too. But it had been found that the alternating
fortnights of boiling heat and near-absolute-zero cold on the lunar surface could play havoc with the
delicate instruments used in certain researches. Hence Wheel Five had been built and was staffed by
research men who were rotated at regular eight-month intervals.
****
Kieran loved it, from the first. He thought that that was because of the sheer beauty of itтАФthe gaunt,
silver death's-head of the Moon forever turning beneath, the still and solemn glory of the undimmed stars,
the filamentaries stretched across the distant star-clusters like shining veils, the quietness, the peace.