"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Flight on Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

FLIGHT ON TITAN

THE GALE ROARED INCESSANTLY like all the tormented souls since creation's dawn, driving
the two sliding and tumbling into the momentary shelter of a ridge of ice. A cloud of glittering ice needles
swept by, rainbow-hued in the brilliant night, and the chill of eighty below zero bit through the sponge
rubber of their suits.
The girl placed her visor close against the man's helmet and said steadily: "This is the end, isn't it,
Tim? Because I'm glad I came with you, then. I'm glad it's both of us together."
The man groaned despairingly, and the blast tore the wood away. He turned aside, thinking
regretfully of the past.
The year 2142, as most people recall, was a disastrous one in the financial world. It was the year of
the collapse of the Planetary Trading Corporation and the year that ushered in the resultant depression.
Most of us remember the hysterical two years of speculation that preceded the crash. These followed
the final development of the Hocken Rocket in 2030, the annexation of the arid and useless Moon by
Russia, and the discovery by the international expeditions of a dead civilization on Mars and a primitive
one on Venus. It was the Venus report that led to the formation of the P.T.C. and the debacle that
followed.
No one knows now who was to blame. All the members of those intrepid expeditions have suffered
under the cloud; two of them were murdered in Paris only a little more than a year ago, presumably by
vengeful investors in Planetary. Gold will do such things to men; they will take mad risks with what they
have, pursuing a vision of what they hope to have, and, when the crash comes, turn on any scapegoat
that's luckless enough to be handy.
At any rate, regardless of responsibility, the rumor started that gold was as common on Venus as iron
on EarthтАФand then the damage was done. No one stopped to reflect that the planet's density is less than
the Earth's, and that gold, or any heavy metal, should be even rarer there, if not utterly absent, as on the
Moon.
The rumors spread like an epidemic, and stories circulated that the expedition members had returned
wealthy. All one had to do, it seemed, was to trade beads and jack-knives to the obliging Venusian
natives for golden cups, golden axes, golden ornaments.
The shares of the quickly organized Planetary Trading Corporation skyrocketed from a par of fifty to
a peak of thirteen hundred. Vast paper fortunes were made; the civilized world went into a frenzy of
speculative fervor; prices of everything shot upward in anticipation of a flood of new goldтАФfood, rent,
clothing, machinery.
We all remember the outcome. Planetary's first two trading expeditions looked long and arduously
for the gold. 'They found the natives; they found them eager enough for beads and jackknives, but they
found them quite destitute of gold. They brought back neat little carvings and a quantity of silver,
scientifically valuable records, and a handful of pearlike stones from Venusian seasтАФbut no gold.
Nothing to pay dividends to the avid stockholders; nothing to support the rumor-puffed structure of
prices, which crashed as quickly as the shares of Planetary, once the truth was out.
The collapse affected investors and noninvestors alike, and among them, Timothy Vick and his
Canadian wife Diane. The spring of 2142 found them staring at each other in their New York apartment,
all but penniless, and in the very depths of despair. Jobs were vanishing, and Tim's training as a salesman
of 'vision sets was utterly useless in a world where nobody could afford to buy them. So they sat and
stared hopelessly, and said very little.
Tim at last broke the gloomy silence. "Di," he said, "what'll we do when it's all gone?"
"Our money? Tim, something will come before then. It has to!"
"But if it doesn't?" At her silence, he continued: "I'm not going to sit and wait. I'm going to do
something."
"What, Tim? What is there to do?"
 "I know!" His voice dropped. "Di, do you remember that queer gem the government expedition