"G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

'I should like to see,' he murmured.
'Yeah,' said Harrison. 'And the wart-cure. Too bad you missed that; it might be the cancer cure
they've been hunting for a century and a half.'
'Oh, that!' muttered Jarvis gloomily. 'That's what started the fight!' He drew a glistening object from
his pocket.
'Here it is.'

VALLEY OF DREAMS

CAPTAIN HARRISON of the Ares expedition turned away from the little telescope in the bow of
the rocket. 'Two weeks more, at the most,' he remarked. 'Mars only retogrades for seventy days in all,
relative to the earth, and we've got to be homeward bound during that period, or wait a year and a half
for old Mother Earth to go around the sun and catch up with us again. How'd you like to spend a winter
here?'
Dick Jarvis, chemist of the party, shivered as he looked up from his notebook. 'I'd just as soon spend
it in a liquid air tank!' he averred. 'These eighty-below-zero summer nights are plenty for me.'
'Well,' mused the captain, 'the first successful Martian expedition ought to be home long before then.'
 'Successful if we get home,' corrected Jarvis. 'I don't trust these cranky rockets - not since the
auxiliary dumped me in the middle of Thyle last week. Walking back from a rocket ride is a new
sensation to me.'
'Which reminds me,' returned Harrison, 'that we've got to recover your films. They're important if
we're to pull this trip out of the red. Remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures? Our
shots ought to pack 'em to the doors. And the broadcast rights, too; we might show a profit for the
Academy.'
'What interests me,' countered Jarvis, 'is a personal profit. A book, for instance; exploration books
are always popular. Martian Deserts - how's that for a title?'
'Lousy!' grunted the captain. 'Sounds like a cookbook for desserts. You'd have to call it 'Love Life
of a Martian,' or something like that.'
Jarvis chuckled. 'Anyway,' he said, 'if we once get back home, I'm going to grab what profit there is,
and never, never, get any farther from the earth than a good stratosphere plane'll take me. I've learned to
appreciate the planet after plowing over this dried-up pill we're on now.'
'I'll lay you odds you'll be back here year after next,' grinned the Captain. 'You'll want to visit your
pal - that trick ostrich.'
'Tweel?' The other's tone sobered. 'I wish I hadn't lost him, at that. He was a good scout. I'd never
have survived the dream-beast but for him. And that battle with the pushcart things - I never even had a
chance to thank him.'
'A pair of lunatics, you two,' observed Harrison. He squinted through the port at the gray gloom of
the Mare Cimmerium. 'There comes the sun.' He paused. 'Listen, Dick - you and Leroy take the other
auxiliary rocket and go out and salvage those films.'
Jarvis stared. 'Me and Leroy?' he echoed ungrammatically. 'Why not me and Putz? An engineer
would have some chance of getting us there and back if the rocket goes bad on us.'
The captain nodded toward the stem, whence issued at that moment a medley of blows and guttural
expletives. 'Putz is going over the insides of the Ares,' he announced. 'He'll have his hands full until we
leave, because I want every bolt inspected. It's too late for repairs once we cast off.'
'And if Leroy and I crack up? That's our last auxiliary.'
'Pick up another ostrich and walk back,' suggested Harrison gruffly. Then he smiled. 'If you have
trouble, we'll hunt you out in the Ares,' he finished. 'Those films are important.' He turned. 'Leroy!'
The dapper little biologist appeared, his face questioning.
'You and Jarvis are off to salvage the auxiliary,' the Captain said. 'Everything's ready and you'd better
start now. Call back at half-hour intervals; I'll be listening.'