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

Martian conditions on Earthmen's bodies. It hit forty per
cent of us. It wasn't really so badfever and dopiness,
mostly."
"When Jim got it, was he well cared for?" she asked. Her
lips were quivering a little.
"Sure, he was well cared for. He got the best care there
was," I lied.
The best care there was? That was a laugh. The Brst cases
got decent care, maybe. But they'd never figured on so
many coming down. There wasn't any room in our little
hospitalthey just had to stay in their bunks in the alumi-
num Quonsets when it hit them. All our doctors but one
were down, and two of them died.
We'd been on Mars six months when it hit us, and the
loneliness had already got us down. All but four of our
rockets had gone back to Earth, and we were alone on a
dead world, our little town of Quonsets huddled together
under that hateful, brassy sky, and beyond it the sand and
rocks that went on forever.
You go up to the North Pole and camp there, and find out
how lonely that is. It was worse out there, a lot worse. The
first excitement was gone long ago, and we were tired, and
homesick in a way nobody was ever homesick beforewe
wanted to see green grass, and real sunshine, and women's
faces, and hear running water; and we wouldn't until Ex-
pedition Three came to relieve us. No wonder guys blew
their tops out there. And then came Martian sickness, on
top of it.
"We did everything for him that we could," I said.
Sure we had. I could still remember Walter and me tramp-
ing through the cold night to the hospital to try to get a
medic, while Breck stayed with him, and how we couldn't
get one.
I remember how Walter had looked up at the blazing sky
as we tramped back, and shaken his fist at the big green star
of Earth.
"People up there are going to dances tonight, watching
shows, sitting around in warm rooms laughing! Why should
good men have to die out here to get them uranium for
cheap power?"
"Can it," I told him tiredly. "Jim's not going to die. A lot of
guys got over it."
The best care there was? That was real funny. All we
could do was wash his face, and give him the pills the
medic left, and watch him get weaker every day till he died.
"Nobody could have done more for him than was done,"
I told Miss Graham.
"I'm glad," she said. "I guessit's just one of those things."
When I got up to go she asked me if I didn't want to see
Jim's room. They'd kept it for him just the same, she said.