"Tom Purdom-Moonchild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

with modifications in the ecology of Earth, and many of the best researchers in the world had left the
bases owned by their nation states and joined the independent colony. Earth needed the research
facilities located in Freedom City and it was willing to pay for the services of the men who controlled
them. The rest of the people in the colony, however, were primarily farmers and small businessmen; they
had left the planned societies of Earth because they wanted more personal freedom, and they knew they
would have led impoverished lives on the Moon if they hadn't been associated with the men at the
research stations. And the people in the research stations naturally felt they should get the lion's share of
the colony's resources.
"You can't have every advantage you had on Earth," the Chairman of City Council, Dr. Nathan
Gibson, had told a delegation of parents. "This is the Moon. We don't have the resources they have on
Earth. Pioneers can't live like the people who stayed behind in civilization. This is a land of opportunity
and it's a place where you can call your mind and soul your own-- but it isn't Earth. It will be a long time
before you can have all the comforts of Earth."
As far as Harvey's father was concerned, however, the parents had been asking for a necessity, not a
luxury, and they weren't getting it because Dr. Gibson and his colleagues were being selfish and greedy.
"We could do it if some of us would give up some of our fancy incomes," Dr. Oliver had said. "We could
double the number of children we could give the treatment to, even if we couldn't give it to everybody.
But they won't do it. They'll let children grow up with their intellectual potential stunted before they'll give
up some of the money they spend on toys for their own children."
Dr. Oliver turned away from the children in the corridor. He straightened up as if he were stepping
onto a speaker's platform, and Harvey lowered his eyes.
"Let's go," Dr. Oliver said.
The light in the hallway varied from section to section as they walked along. The walls were decorated
with long, brightly colored murals and windows in the ceiling let in filtered sunlight which focused on big
potted plants. The sun was hammering on an airless desert outside, but Freedom City was a sealed oasis
of life, color, and warmth. The crowded underground cities of Earth tended to be sterile and colorless,
but the citizens of Freedom City had tried to create an environment in which there would be room to
stretch your arms, and food for all your senses. They hadn't crossed 240,000 miles of empty space
merely because they wanted to re-create the sterile, dull environments they had left on Earth.
Martin Luther King Garden was a good example of the lunar colonist's fondness for bright colors and
lush vegetation. It was the life support system for a big section of Freedom City but it had been laid out
so it would be a pleasant place to visit, too. Fountains danced among the big-leafed plants that produced
most of the oxygen. Narrow, winding paths twisted through the shrubbery. Tropical birds chattered and
twittered in the branches of small trees. Oversize dragonflies darted through the dome and preyed on
other insects.
The bio-engineers who had developed the organic life support systems had been 240,000 miles away
from the nearest large supply of free air and water. They had wanted a system they could trust and they
had known that the living organisms in the system would still be subject to the laws of nature. The
microorganisms in the system would still be mutating and evolving as they adapted to their environment
and competed with each other. Humans would still be arriving from Earth with their bodies full of germs.
If the lunar colonists populated their domes with one or two species of plants and food animals, a single
new disease might spread through the whole system and wipe out most of their supply of food or oxygen
before they could cope with it. An organic life support system had to be a complete, self-sustaining
artificial eco-system and it had to be as varied as the natural eco-systems of Earth. If a new disease
attacked a plant, there had to be other species of plants that could form a barrier between the disease
and its next victim-- or that could take the victim's place and fill in the gap if the disease wiped out a
whole species. And you couldn't add new species of plants without adding new species of insects and
microorganisms, and all the other creatures they needed to support them and keep them in balance.
Nothing lived alone. Every living organism was supported by a web of life. You could build a new web
under a lunar dome but it still had to be a web.