"Henry Kuttner - The Sky is Falling UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"We'll have to take the robot outside," he said. "Got a control unit on a portable?"

"Sure have." White did things to a wall panel and a square box slid out and cradled itself on a carriage with flexible telescoping legs.

"Two miles of wire will do," Dyson said. "I've got the place for the cache spotted."

"Two miles . . . mm-m. Two ... got it. Johnny, you really figure there won't be rescue ships sent out for us?"

"Not a chance. Millions for defense, but try to get

a few bucks spent on an expedition like ours, once our work's done. Rescue ships, ha. Rescue ships take expensive equipment. They take man-hours. You can't waste stuff like that, Benjy. Ask the Energy Allocation Board. It took a miracle to .get this ship out and another to keep it from going for military defense."

Dyson was talking with the topmost level of his mind, waiting for enough pojver to accumulate, listening to the music grow stronger and stronger in his skull.

"Maybe so," White said doubtfully. "What if the Chief sends out a signal, though? He might do it somehow. He might mark a big SOS out on the desert."

Dyson considered the possibility, weaving it in and out of that beautiful, distant vibration of music. Martine was a problem, of course. But any problem could be solved, if you approached it the right way.

"He'll come around," he said. "It's two against one, remember. Once he knows he can't ever get back to Earth, he'll come around. Once he knows our plans . . . Who'd turn down Eden?"

"Oh, it sounds like a lazy man's paradise, all right," White said. "That's for me. Little streams of whiskey come trickling down the rocks. Just the same, I'd kind of like to see our cargo get back home."

"What for? It's no good."

"Can't tell. It might be. All I'm saying is, I wish I could kick the ship on the rump and send her back to Earth."

"How can the ship get back without the robot to guide it?" Dyson asked in a too-patient voice, his eyes unfocused as he concentrated on the gathering power in the helmet.

He touched it with a tentative finger and then bent to the mirror set ha the wall to read the reversed image of the dial set hi the helmet's front. "Won't be long now," he murmured. "We're going to need the robot, Benjy. Just remember that. Unless you want to work like a dog."

"I been working like a dog all my life," White said. "And all the bones had the meat chawed off before I got 'em. Oh, I'm convinced, Johnny, but I can't help thinking about Poochie."

"You'd have plenty of tune to think about her hi jail."

"Guess so. Tell you what. Maybe later we can figure

a way to get the cargo home. If we built another robot Чit might take quite a while, but if we managed itЧwe could spare the one we got now."

"Why not?" Dyson agreed quickly. "Plenty of time to work that out later on."

"Plenty. We'll want something to keep us busy, after Eden's all built. I justЧ" He grinned a little sheepishly. "I don't know, I guess I just hate to give up without a struggle."

"We aren't!" Dyson was stung. "There's no use struggling when you haven't got a chance. If there was a chance I'd be the last man to give up, Benjy. I'd fight to the last ditch. But Earth's as good as gone, and . . . oh, shut up. Don't think about it."

But he could feel it and see itЧthe solid planet shuddering underfoot, buckling above hollow emptiness, and the mushroom cloud rolling majestically toward the sky. Was it Man's fault? He'd picked up that fatally sharp knife of his own volition, but who gave Man the knife in the first place? God? It was the fruit of the tree of knowledge, all right, and to taste it was to die. God's fault, then, not Adam's.

"Let's go," he said abruptly. "We haven't got all the time hi the world. Where's the robot?"

"Storage. Johnny, you thought how a court of law might feel about this?"