"The Tomorrow People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

THE TOMORROW PEOPLETHE TOMORROW PEOPLE
by Judith Merril

Scanned by BW-SciFi

This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein
and any person, living or dead; any such reнsemblance is purely coincidental.

For Milt and the unturned back

Published by Pyramid Books
First printing: May 1960

Copyright, ฉ 1960, by Judith Merril
All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America
PROLOGUE
June, 1973ЧJanuary, 1976

They sent two men out through unknown space to a far cold place, a place whose
very name was fear, the name of the cruel god, the god of war. They shot two men
off the MoonЧ out from the sun and away from the earthЧin a new great ship with
a shiny hull and a miracle fuel.
The ship went out with a blast and a prayer. After three years it came back with
a sigh, unpowered, fuel-less, floating in slow-spiraled orbit through empty sky
around the Moon. It came back with its hull scratched and dented and darkened
from the dust and debris of space, the wind and sands of Mars. It came back with
one man in it instead of two.
Johnny Wendt was the one who came back.
PART ONE
January 1976ЧJune 23,1977

Rockland, N. Y.ЧThursday, June 23, 1:30 am. (E.D.S.T.)

He woke up screaming again.
Or else he dreamed the scream?
But when his eyes started to open, they closed reactively against the light. So
Lee was up. And so it was no dream.
Sweat tickled his neck, but he lay still, breathing evenly, eyes shut. He would
talk to her in the morning. Not now. In the morning it would be better, but not
now. . . .
He opened his eyes a slit to make sure. It was her light, all right. She was
sitting up, watching him.
"Sorry, darling," she said. "I couldn't get to sleep, I didn't think the light
would bother you. . . ."
"Huh?" He blinked his eyes open wider. She was sitting, but with a pillow
propped behind her back, book on her lap. "No, 'sarigh'," he mumbled. "Go 'head.
Light don' bother..."
She'd been reading. . . . She had been up first! He shook his head, clearing it,