"Dean Wesley Smith - A Time To Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Dean Wesley)

A TIME TO DREAM
by Dean Wesley Smith
Dean Wesley Smith has sold over twenty novels and around one hundred short stories to various
magazines and anthologies. HeтАЩs been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and has won a World
Fantasy Award and a Locus Award. He was the editor and publisher of Pulphouse Publishing, and has
just finished editing the Star Trek anthology Strange New Worlds.

Captain Brian Sable of the Earth Protection League could tell there would be a
mission. Tonight was the night. The first mission in over a week. The border
skirmish on the third moon of the Garland Star Cluster must have flared up again. Or
something else threatened the security of Earth. The League was needed to stop the
threat. He was needed, and he was ready.
Across the small nursing home room the old clock on the wooden dresser ticked,
echoing in the small space and dim light, demanding his attention just as it did every
night as he lay in his bed, awake, waiting. When heтАЩd first arrived at the Shady Valley
Nursing Home outside of Chicago six years earlier, that old clock had let him count
down the seconds until he died. Long seconds, never-ending seconds that he had
wished would go by faster.
Now the loud ticking of that old clock in the night counted the minutes until the next
mission, until the time he could become young again. And the time waiting, getting
older and closer to death went by too fast now.
Far too fast.
Now he wanted to stay alive, to stay with the missions and the Earth Protection
League, to get the chance to be young enough to wear his Proton Stunners and fight
the good fight against the enemies of Earth.
The clock ticked.
Time went by.
Down the dimly lit hall outside his roomтАЩs door a nurse laughed at an unheard joke.
Captain Brian Sable coughed, the sound weak and pitiful in the silence of the nursing
home.
He glanced at the clock. He could barely see the hands in the light from the hall, but
he could tell it was only a little after ten in the evening. It was still far too early for
them to come for him.
He tried to roll his ninety-one-year-old body over on its side, but only succeeded in
shifting the sheet slightly under him. He hadnтАЩt had the strength to pull himself out of
bed for over two years, let alone roll over. And he couldnтАЩt remember the last time
heтАЩd walked across this small room on his own to the bathroom. A nurseтАЩs aide
always had to carry him and plop him on the cold toilet, then carry him back to his
bed or wheelchair.
He laughed, and the laugh again turned into a rough cough that sent his old heart
pounding. He forced himself to calm down and to not think about how he was at the
moment. He hated thinking about how old he was, how frail his body had become,
how dependent on others he now was. He reminded himself that none of that
mattered like it used to.
Now he had the missions for the Earth Protection League. The missions gave his old
life purpose, his continued liv-ing in this way station of the dying a valid reason. And
even though there hadnтАЩt been a mission for almost a week, he knew tonight was the
night.
He could tell.
It was all in the details. For example, the night nurse had left the rail on his bed