"HalfWorldsMeet-HughRaymond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Raymond Hugh)

sand. What looked like two badly fitted halves fitted to each other, one greatly
overlapping the other. A smaller full sphere hung beyond the wider half.
"This is what the three planets look like now, Mo-Ad," he said.
Mo-Ad gazed earnestly at the diagram, eager to please his father who had done
what no other parent of his race would -- imparted precious knowledge to his
son.
"And what is the name of the Top, father ?"
"Mars, my son."
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PROFESSOR CHARTERS Randolph was no snob. He did his plowing himself. The little
college town was too poor to support him adequately and pay for the wild
experiments his faculty colleagues frowned on. He cracked a whip in the air
above the heads of his two blowsy horses and felt the plow-belt about his waist
pulled forward sharply.
His action was automatic, because he really wasn't thinking of the plowing at
all. The long furrows lengthened out behind him in mathematically straight
lines, and occasionally he absently cracked his whip and was pulled forward when
he got around to noticing that the plow had stopped. Randolph jerked his head up
and mopped it with a violently red handkerchief. He looked around with a
startled gaze and realized that he and his horses had reached the end of the
field. Wearily he started to turn them around. Half-heartedly, he hitched up the
belt encircling his waist, then, suddenly let it drop, stepped up to the horses,
disconnected their reins and with a slap on the rump sent them ambling toward
the barn. He took himself painfully toward the distant cottage settling like a
grey brick on the brown hill-side.
His wife Martha greeted him in the front yard which crouched close to the
country road. She waved a hand at him and wiped the sweat off her own brow with
the other. Hard toil had changed Martha Randolph from the city stenographer who
had fallen in love with the Professor into a tall, hard woman of the soil who
broke her back during the day with farm chores and spent the evenings reading
Shakespeare and holding fuming test tubes for her husband.
"Martha, I'm sick of it," he said with a droop in the corners of his mouth. He
passed her and went on up to the porch where he doused his sweating head in a
pail of cold water and dipped a panful of it into his mouth.
She came up behind him and, laying her cheek against his shoulder, hugged him
fiercely.
"Go on in the house and lay down," she suggested.
He turned to her and stood arms akimbo.
"No, I'm going into the lab. When's supper? Is Charley coming over?"
She bent over the pail of fresh water and took a long drink before replying.
When she straightened, she flashed her white teeth in the light of the sun.
"Charley'll be over after supper. We're having steak Want any beer ?
"Never mind, darling," he replied, "steak's enough. Thanks."
He turned abruptly and walked around the house to a small shed with a heavy door
which he unlocked with a big old-fashioned key. The interior was dark. He
carefully lit a kerosene lamp and sent some of the gloom skittering.
Well, he thought, I'm in my castle now. The farm and the back-breaking labor lay
far behind. This was his citadel--his citadel of science, as he called it, a
safe haven against a disintegrating world. He pulled up a chair, sat down and
looked around, gloating.