"Jack Vance - Sail 25" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

SAIL 25 тАУ Jack Vance (ss)
Re-scanned and proofed by ~sille

SEVERAL YEARS ago Cele Goldsmith edited Amazing Stories. One evening at the home of Poul Anderson she
produced a set of cover illustrations which she had bought by the dozen for reasons of economy, and asked those
present to formulate stories based upon them. Poul rather gingerly accepted a cover whose subject I forget. Frank
Herbert was assigned the representation of a human head, with a cutaway revealing an inferno of hellfire, scurrying
half-human creatures, and the paraphernalia of a nuclear power plant. I was rather more fortunate and received a
picture purporting to display a fleet of spaceships driven by sun-sails. Theoretically the idea is sound, and space
scientists have fang included this concept among their speculations for future planetary voyages. Astrogation of
course becomes immensely complex, but by carefully canting the sail and using planetary and/or solar gravities, any
region of the solar system may be visitedтАФ not always by the most direct route, but neither did the clipper ships sail
great-circle routes.
The disadvantages are the complication of the gear and the tremendous expanse of sailтАФ to be measured in square
milesтАФnecessary to accelerate any meaningful mass of ship to any appreciable velocity within a reasonable
time-span.
Which brings me back to my cover picture. The artist, no doubt for purposes of artistry, had depicted the ships with
sails about the size of spinnakers for a twelve-meter, which at Earth radius from the sun would possibly produce as
much as one fly-power of thrust. Additionally the sails were painted in gaudy colors, in defiance of the conventional
wisdom which specifies that sun-sails shall be flimsy membranes of plastic, coated with a film of reflective metal a few
molecules thick. Still, no matter how illogical the illustration, I felt that I must justify each detail by one means or
another. After considerable toil I succeeded, with enormous gratitude that I had not been selected to write about the
cutaway head which had been the lot of Frank Herbert.



SAIL 25

1

Henry Belt came limping into the CONFERENCE room, mounted the dais, settled himself at the desk. He looked
once around the room: a swift bright glance which, focusing nowhere, treated the eight young men who faced him to
an almost insulting disinterest. He reached in his pocket, brought forth a pencil and a flat red book, which he placed
on the desk. The eight young men watched in absolute silence. They were much alike: healthy, clean, smart, their
expressions identically alert and wary. Each had heard legends of Henry Belt, each had formed his private plans and
private determinations.
Henry Belt seemed a man of a different species. His face was broad, flat, roped with cartilage and muscle, with skin
the color and texture of bacon rind. Coarse white grizzle covered his scalp, his eyes were crafty slits, his nose a
mis-shapen lump. His shoulders were massive, his legs short and gnarled.

"First of all," said Henry Belt, with a gap-toothed grin, "I'll make it clear that I don't expect you to like me. If you do
I'll be surprised and displeased. It will mean that I haven't pushed you hard enough."
He leaned back in his chair, surveyed the silent group. "You've heard stories about me. Why haven't they kicked
me out of the service? Incorrigible, arrogant, dangerous Henry Belt. Drunken Henry Belt. (This last, of course, is
slander. Henry Belt has never been drunk in his life.) Why do they tolerate me? For one simple reason: out of
necessity. No one wants to take on this kind of job. Only a man like Henry Belt can stand up to it: year after year in
space, with nothing to look at but a half-dozen round-faced young scrubs. He takes them out, he brings them back.
Not all of them, and not all of those who come back are spacemen today. But they'll all cross the street when they see
him coming. Henry Belt? you say. They'll turn pale or go red. None of them will smile. Some of them are high placed
now. They could kick me loose if they chose. Ask them why they don't. Henry Belt is a terror, they'll tell you. He's