"Whats It Like Out There by Edmond Hamilton" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

slid away under our feet as our squads followed Captain
Wall toward the distant metal bulk that lay oddly canted
and broken in a little shallow valley.
"Come on, menhurryl Hurryl"
Sure, all of it a dream, the dreamlike way we walked
with our lead-soled shoes dragging our feet back after each
step, and the voices coming through the mask resonators
muffled and distant.
Only not a dream, but a nightmare, when we got up to
the canted metal bulk and saw what had happened to
Rocket Seventhe metal hull ripped like paper, and a few
men crawling out of the wreck with blood on them, and a
gurgling sound where shattered tanks were emptying, and
voices whimpering, "First aid! First aidi"
Only it hadn't happened, it hadn't happened yet at all,
for we were still back in Rocket Four coming in, we hadn't
landed yet at all but we were going to any minute.
"We're coming down. . . ."
I couldn't go through it all again. I yelled and fought my
hammock straps and woke up, and I was in my plane seat
and a scared hostess was a foot away from me, saying,
"This is Omaha, Sergeant. We're coming down."
They were all looking at me, all the other passengers,
and I guessed I'd been talking in the dream1 still had the
sweat down my back like all those nights in the hospital
when I'd keep waking up.
I sat up, and they all looked away from me quick and
pretended they hadn't been staring.
We came down to the airport. It was midday, and the hot
Nebraska sun felt good on my back when I got out. I was
lucky, for when I asked at the bus depot about going to
Cuffington, there was a bus all ready to roll.
A farmer sat down beside me, a big young fellow who
offered me cigarettes and told me it was only a few hours'
ride to Cuffington.
"Your home there?" he asked.
"No, my home's back in Ohio," I said. "A friend of mine
came from there. Name of Clymer."
He didn't know him, but he remembered that one of the
town boys had gone on that second expedition to Mars.
"Yeah," I said. "That was Jim."
He couldn't keep it in any longer. "What's it like out there,
anyway?"
I said, "Dry. Terrible dry."
"Ill bet it is," he said. "To tell the truth, it's too dry here,
this year, for good wheat weather. Last year it was fine. Last
year.. ."
Cuffington, Nebraska, was a wide street of stores, and
other streets with trees and old houses, and yellow wheat
fields all around as far as you could see. It was pretty hot,