"Eric Frank Russel - The Great Explosion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

"I'm no expert myself but I think it's neither," Grayder offered.

"That so? What's your idea about it?"

"When you're born you take pot luck. You are born physically perfect or
physically imperfect and in the latter case you're a weakling or a cripple. You're
born mentally perfect or mentally deformed and in the latter case you're an idiot
or a criminal. I suspect that the majority of criminals could be cured once and for
all by brain-surgery if only we knew the proper technique. But we don't."

"You may be right," the Ambassador conceded.

"The great question is that of whether mental deformity gets passed down,"
Grayder went on. "Whether the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children
even unto the third or fourth generation."

"They'll be somewhere around their twentieth generation by now."

"I was merely quoting," said Grayder. He eyed the screen which the glowing ball
now half-filled. "We'll know soon."

The Ambassador was silent and vaguely uneasy.

"From our viewpoint," Grayder continued, "the Great Explosion rid our world of a
horde of nonconformist nuisances. But, as you can now appreciate, things look
mighty different from a ship plunging into space. The home world is far away,
lost in the mist of stars. On any new world a Terran is a Terran even though long
out of touch and a raving lunatic. He's of the same shape and form as ourselves
and that's what counts. He's not of some other and completely outlandish shape."



file:///F|/rah/Eric%20Frank%20Russel/Russell,%2...0The%20Great%20Explosion%20(v1.0)%20(html).html (8 of 218) [8/28/03 12:57:03 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Eric%20Frank%20Russel/Russell,%20Eric%20Frank%20-%20%20The%20Great%20Explosion%20(v1.0)%20(html).html


"All the same, he must be considerably different from us," ruled the Ambassador
judicially, "else he wouldn't be squatting in the middle of the starfield. A misfit
remains a misfit no matter what his shape." He patted his big belly in unconscious
parody of his words. "While I have no resentment against those who deserted the
world of their birth neither am I prejudiced in their favor. Let us take them as we
find them and judge them solely on their merits-if any."

"Yes, Your Excellency," said Grayder, disinclined to argue. There were, he
thought, going to be quite a lot of opinions about what does or does not constitute
merit.

Close inspection of the surface provided a surprise as the ship raced around the
planet with two thousand pairs of eyes gazing from its ports. Everyone had
expected clearly visible signs of human spread and development. Instead, the