"Chad Oliver - Blood's a Rover" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

before the last possible moment, to prepare rather than just sit back and hope for the best. That man was
working now as he had never worked before, in the face of an unseen threat from out of the stars, even
to save his own existence, was a monument to his hard-won maturity. It would have been so easy, so
pleasant, just to take it easy and enjoy a safe and comfortable lifeтАФand beyond question it would have
meant the end of the human race.
Of one thing, Conan Lang was sureтАФwhenever man stopped trying, stopped working and dreaming
and reaching for impossible heights, whenever he settled back in complacency, on that day he shrunk to
atrophied insignificance.


Sirius Ten had been a relatively easy project because of the planet-wide nature of its culture. Sirius
Ten had only one huge land mass, and one great sea. The natives all shared basically the same life
pattern, built around the cultivation of dry ricefruit, and the teams of the Applied Process Corps were
faced with only one major problem rather than hundreds of them as was more often the case. It was true
that certain peoples who lived on the shores of the sea, together with one island group, had a variant
culture based on fishing, but these were insignificant numerically and could for practical purposes be
ignored.
The dry ricefruit was grown by a cutting and burning method, under which a field gave a good yield
only once before the land was exhausted and the people had to move on. Under these conditions,
individual ownership of land never developed, and there were no inequalities of wealth to speak of. The
joint families worked different fields every year, and since there was no market for a surplus there was no
effort made to cultivate more land than was really needed.
The Oripesh natives of Sirius Ten had a well-developed cult of ancestor worship, thinking of their
dead as always watching over them and guiding their steps. Since whatever the ancestors did
automatically had the sanction of tradition behind it, it was through them that the Corps had decided to
workтАФit being simply a question of palming off Corps Agents as ancestors come back from their
dwelling place in the mountains to help their people. With careful preparations and experienced men, this
had not proved overly difficultтАФbut there were always miscalculations, accidents. Men were not like
chemicals, and they did not always react as they were supposed to react. There was always an individual
variable to be considered. That was why if a Corps Agent lived long enough to retire you knew both that
he knew his stuff and that he had had more than his share of plain old-fashioned luck.
 Sirius Ten had to be shifted from Stage Four to Stage Five. This was a staggering change in
economics, social structure, and technologyтАФone that had taken men on Earth many centuries to
accomplish. The men of the Applied Process Corps had to do it in a matter of a few years. And so they
set out, armed with a variety of ricefruit that grew well in marshy land and a sound knowledge of
irrigation.
With such a lever they could move a world.


It was three years to the day when Conan Lang returned to Sirius Ten. The patrol ship came in on her
anti-gravs and he waited eagerly for the outlift shaft to open. His heart was pounding in his chest and his
lips were dryтАФit was almost like coming home again.
He swung his newly-strong body into the outlift and came out of it in the green field he had planted so
long ago. He took a deep breath of the familiar humid air and grinned broadly at the hot, burning sun over
his head. It was good to be backтАФback at a place like so many other places he had known, places that
were as close to a home as any he could ever have without Kit. The breeze whispered softly through the
green ricefruit and he waved at Julio who came running across the field to meet him. These were, he
knew, his kind of peopleтАФand he had missed Andy all these years.
тАЬHey there, Julio!тАЭ he laughed, shaking MedinaтАЩs hand. тАЬHow goes it?тАЭ
тАЬPretty good, Conan,тАЭ Julio said quietly. тАЬPretty good.тАЭ