"Wolfe, Gene - The Urth Of The New Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

I closed the lid and locked it, adjusted my pistol to its
lowest setting, and fused lid and coffer into a single mass
with the beam.
To go on deck, one passes through strange gangways,
often filled by an echoing voice that, though it cannot be
distinctly heard, can always be understood. When one
reaches a hatch, one must put on a cloak of air, an invisible
atmosphere of one's own held by what appears to be no
more than a shining necklace of linked cylinders. There is
a hood of air for the head, gloves of air for the hands (these
grow thin, however, when one grasps something, and the
cold seeps in), boots of air, and so forth.
These ships that sail between the suns are not like the
ships of Urth. In place of deck and hull, there is deck after
deck, so that one goes over the railing of one and finds
oneself walking on the next. The decks are of wood, which
resists the deadly cold as metal will not; but metal and
stone underlie them.
Masts sprout from every deck, a hundred times taller
than the Flag Keep of the Citadel. Every part appears
straight, yet when one looks along their length, which is
like looking down some weary road that runs beyond the
horizon, one sees that it bends ever so slightly, bowing to
the wind from the suns.
There are masts beyond counting; every mast carries a
thousand spars, and every spar spreads a sail of fuligin and
silver. These fill the sky, so that if a man on deck desires to
see the distant suns' blaze of citron, white, violet, and rose,
he must labor to catch a glimpse of them between the sails,
just as he might labor to glimpse them among the clouds of
an autumn night.
As I was told by the steward, it sometimes happens that
a sailor aloft will lose his hold. When that occurs on Urth,
the unfortunate man generally strikes the deck and dies.
Here there is no such risk. Though the ship is so mighty,
and filled with such treasures, and though we are so much
nearer her center than those who walk upon Urth are to the
center of Urth, yet her attraction is but slight. The careless
sailor drifts among the shrouds and sails like thistledown,
most injured by the derision of his workmates, whose
voices, however, he cannot hear. (For the void hushes
every voice except to the speaker himself, unless two come
so near that their investitures of air become a single
atmosphere.) And I have heard it said that if it were not
thus, the roaring of the suns would deafen the universe.
Of all this I knew little when I went on deck. I had been
told that I would have to wear a necklace, and that the
hatches were so constructed that the inner must be shut
before the outer can be opened--but hardly more. Imagine
my surprise, then, when I stepped out, the leaden coffer