"James Tiptree Jr. - Beam Us Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

shivering, but he felt clear. He reached up and found his headphones were in place; he must have put
them on along with the rest of the drill. He clicked on. Voices rattled and roared at him. He switched off.
Then he took off the headpiece and dropped it on the floor.

He looked around: 18,000, heading 88-05. He was over the Atlantic. In front of him the sky was
darkening fast. A pinpoint glimmer ten o'clock high. Sirius, probably.

He thought about Sirius, trying to recall his charts. Then he thought about turning and going back down.
Without paying much attention, he noticed he was crying with his mouth open.

Carefully he began feeding his torches and swinging the nose of his pod around and up. He brought it
neatly to a point on Sirius. Up. Up. Behind him, a great pale swing of contrail fell away above the lilac
shadow, growing, towering to the tiny plane that climbed at its tip. Up. Up. The contrail cut off as the
plane burst into the high cold dry.

As it did so, Hobie's ears skewered and he screamed wildly. The pain quit; his drums had burst. Up!
Now he was gasping for air, strangling. The great torches drove him up, up, over the curve of the world.
He was hanging on the star. Up! The fuel gauges were knocking. Any second they would quit, and he
and the bird would be a falling stone. "Beam us up, Scotty!" he howled at Sirius, laughing,
coughingтАФcoughing to death, as the torches falteredтАФ



┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


тАФAnd was still coughing as he sprawled on the shining resiliency under the arcing grids. He gagged,
rolled, finally focused on a personage leaning toward him out of a complex chair. The personage had
round eyes, a slitted nose, and the start of a quizzical smile.

Hobie's head swiveled slowly. It was not the bridge of the Enterprise. There were no viewscreens, only
a View. And Lieutenant Uhura would have had trouble with the freeform flashing objects suspended in
front of what appeared to be a girl wearing spots. The spots, Hobie made out, were fur.

Somebody who was not Bones McCoy was doing something to Hobie's stomach. Hobie got up a hand
and touched the man's gleaming back. Under the mesh it was firm and warm. The man looked up,
grinned; Hobie looked back at the captain.

"Do not have fear," a voice was saying. It seemed to be coming out of a globe by the captain's console.
"We will tell you where you are."

"I know where I am," Hobie whispered. He drew a deep, sobbing breath.

"I'm HOME!" he yelled. Then he passed out.


The End
 ┬й 1969, 1997 by James Tiptree, Jr.;

first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction;