"Philip E. High - The Prodigal Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Phillip E)

charts on reflexes, glandular reactions and the results of deliberate
bruising and cuts. They removed fragments of flesh and skin, scrapings
from the teeth and hair from his head and body. Slowly, very slowly, they
became reassured.

At the end of the sixth grueling hour the Chief Medic removed his
medical mask. "I have no reasons to suppose you are not human. Our tests
give reasonable grounds for assuming you are the original Duncan." The
Chief Medic was not an ungracious man, just a frustrated one suffering
from a sense of anticlimax. Somehow the whole business had turned out
to be routine and wholly mundane.

There was nothing startling about Peter Duncan. A slim quiet man with
fair, rather untidy hair. Certainly he seemed almost unnaturally healthy
and well-muscled but, apart from that, a man you might meet anywhere.
Wide but not striking blue eyes, a good strong chin, a long amused and
faintly mocking mouthтАФhell, the man was ordinary.

"Nothing ever happens to me" thought the Chief Medic, savagely. He
had spent almost the entire war in a military hospital a thousand feet
underground and was suffering from a sense of frustration. He'd never
seen the war, only the beds, the lines of casualties tossed like unwanted
carcasses, one after another, onto the brightly lit operating tables.

"You may dress. Food will be brought as soon as you are ready."
Belatedly and with some effort he added: "Good luck, Duncan." The "By
God, you'll need it" showed only in his eyes.

Outside the tele-mikes were still 'live' and waiting. One of the news
circuits was filling in the time by giving a resume of past events.

It was a particularly cloying broadcast deliberately slanted and
predigested for the lower intelligence brackets and, therefore, coated with
an unreal intimacy. It was, however, reasonably accurate: "No one will
ever know what happened to the Mackley. Loading and preflight checks
had proceeded normally. She blasted out of orbit dead on schedule with
one hundred and eighty-three passengers and a crew of thirty five."

"She was never seen again."
 "Her last routine message was received five days out of orbit but after
that her fate is one of the mysteries of space."

"We do know, however, that a Mattrain vessel recorded a disturbance,
possibly an explosion on her instruments and went to investigate."

"The aliens found only drifting metallic dust but, nonetheless their
instruments were recording distress signals. They immediately centered
on these calls and found single life-craft."

The announcer paused dramatically. "Within this vessel the aliens