"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - I'm Going to Meet My Br" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

had not yet been adapted for vertical takeoff.
The stranger would seat himself on the plinth of one of the columns and, sit there,
chin in hand, in silence.
He brightened up only when the schoolboys appeared on the beach. Then he
would stand on the top step of the stairway and watch them at play until a fair-haired
lad in a black-and-orange striped jacket would spot him and dash up the steps. Each
time he would rush at such speed that his striped jacket, which he had flung over his
shoulders, would stream out like a gaudy banner.
The gloomy stranger would change visible. He would cheerily meet the boy, and
the two of them nodding goodbye to me would go off, discussing their affairs with
animation.
At first I thought they were father and son. But one day I heard the boy shouting
to someone as he ran: "I'm going to meet my brother."
Later I learnt, from the brothers' conversation, that the elder was called
Alexander.
What ensues took place about a week after I first saw Alexander. He came along
at the usual time and sat down by a column, whistling a strange and somewhat harsh
tune. I was reading, but without much concentration, because I knew Valentine
Randin's "Song of the Blue Planet" almost by heart. From time to time I looked up
from my book to glance at Alexander and it seemed to me that his face was
somehow familiar.
There was a slight breeze. As I was turning the pages of my tattered book a loose
page blew away and fluttered over the flags. It came to a stop almost at Alexander's
feet. He picked it up and got up to give it to me. I got up as well and met in the
middle of the colonnade.
This was the first time I had seen him so close and I found he was younger than I
had thought. The wrinkles between his eyebrows gave his features a stern
expression, but now he was smiling and the wrinkles had gone.
"Your book isn't very interesting it seems?" he said, giving me the page.
"It's just that I know it so well." I didn't want the conversation to end here, so I
remarked, "Your brother's late."
"He was going to be late today, but I had forgotten." We sat down together.
Alexander asked me to let him have a look at my book. I was surprised he did not
know Randin's short stories, but I said nothing. As he opened the book and laid his
palm across the pages to keep them from blowing away, I noticed a white forked
scar on the back of it. He caught my glance and said: "It happened out there... on
Yellow Rose."
Immediately I recalled everything. "The Snow Planet?" I exclaimed. "Alexander
Sneg!" (Sneg-snow.-Tr.)

The unusual broadcasts, and special numbers of magazines with pictures of Sneg
and his three companions-were all recent history, and all over the world people had
spoken their names with admiration.
Before me I saw a man who had returned to Earth three hundred years after
setting out from it. That in itself was not astonishing-after all "Banderilla" and
"Mousson" had also been in space for more than two centuries. And though the
story of the photon frigate in which Sneg had returned was more unusual than that of
the others, I was not thinking of that just then.
"Alexander," I said, feeling I had come up against a strange riddle, "surely three
hundred years... and the boy is not more than twelve. How are you his brother?"