"Jack Williamson - Afterlife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

It lands at the old capitol, far across the continent. I'd never been there, nor seen any kind
of starship till the year I turned twelve. That quiet Sabbath morning, the rest of the family
was gone in the wagon with my father to a revival meeting in another village down the
river. Expecting no miracle there or anywhere, I'd been happy to stay home and do the
chores.

Awakened by a rooster crowing, I was walking out to the barn to milk our three cows. I
heard something thundering across the sky. In a moment I found it, a flash of silver when it
caught the sun. I dropped the milk bucket, staring while it wheeled low over the crumbled
ruins of something that had stood on the hill west of us.

It turned and dived straight at me.

With no time to run, I stood frozen while it sank over the west pasture and the apple
orchard. It struck the cornfield and plowed on though a cloud of dust and flying rocks till it
stopped at the edge of my mother's kitchen. Its thunder ceased. It lay still, a smoking mass
of broken metal.

I stood there watching, waiting for something more to happen. Nothing did. I caught my
breath at last, and walked uneasily toward it. Nothing about it made any kind of sense until
I looked into the long furrow it had dug and found a torn and bleeding human arm. A leg
farther on, most of the skin torn off. Another naked leg, still attached to the mangled body.
Finally a hairless skull grinning from the bottom of the ditch.

Dazed by the sudden strangeness of it, I thought I ought to call my father or the constable
or the schoolmaster, but they were all away at the revival. I was still there, wondering what
to do, when I saw a carrion bird hovering over the body. I shouted and threw stones to
keep it away till some of the neighbors came from up the river. We gathered up what we
could, the smallest red scraps in my milk bucket, and carried them into the church.

The sheriff came on horseback, the doctor with him. They frowned over the body parts,
laid out on a long table made of planks laid across the benches. The doctor fitted them
closer together to see if anything was missing. The sheriff picked up pieces of broken
metal, scowled at them uneasily, threw them back in the ditch.

They all left at last, for their dinners or whatever they had to do. I think they were afraid of
too much they didn't understand. So was I, but I didn't like the flies buzzing around the
body. I went home for a sheet to cover it. After a cold corn pone and a bowl of clabbered
milk for lunch, I came back to look at the wreck again, and watch the empty sky. Nothing
else came down.

Evening came. I milked the cows again, fed the pig, found a dozen eggs in the nests. I
heard dogs barking and went back to the church to be certain the door was closed. Night
fell as I was walking home. Our planet has no moon. In the sudden darkness, the stars
were a blaze of diamonds.

I stopped to look up at them, wondering about the stranger. Where was his home? Why
had he come here? What could have gone so terribly wrong when he tried to land? The
answers were beyond me, but I stood there a long time, wishing I'd been born somewhere