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

beneath my arm.
Above me rose the black masts and their silver sails, tier
upon tier, until it seemed they must push aside the very
stars. The rigging might have been cobweb, were the spider
as large as the ship--and the ship was larger than many an
isle that boasts a hall and an armiger in it who thinks
himself almost a monarch. The deck itself was extensive as
a plain; merely to set foot on it required all my courage.
When I sat writing in my cabin, I had scarcely been
aware that my weight had been reduced by seven-eighths.
Now I seemed to myself like a ghost, or rather a man of
paper, a fit husband for the paper women I had colored and
paraded as a child. The force of the wind from the suns is
less than the lightest zephyr of Urth; yet slight though it
was, I felt it and feared I might be blown away. I seemed
almost to float above the deck rather than to walk on it;
and I know that it is so, because the power of the necklace
kept outsoles of air between the planks and the soles of my
boots.
I looked around for some sailor who might advise me of
the best way to climb, thinking that the decks would hold
many, as the decks of our ships did on Urth. There was no
one; to keep their cloaks of air from growing foul, all hands
remain below save when they are needed aloft, which is but
seldom. Knowing no better, I called aloud. There was, of
course, no answer.
A mast stood a few chains off, but as soon as I saw it I
knew I had no hope of climbing it; it was thicker through
than any tree that ever graced our forests, and as smooth as
metal. I began to walk, fearing a hundred things that would
never harm me and utterly ignorant of the real risks I ran.
The great decks are flat, so that a sailor on one part can
signal to his mate some distance away; if they were curved,
with surfaces everywhere equally distant from the hunger
of the ship, separated hands would be concealed from each
other's sight, as ships were hidden from one another under
the horizons of Urth. But because they are flat, they seem
always to slant, unless one stands at the center. Thus I felt,
light though I was, that I climbed a ghostly hill.
Climb it I did for the space of many breaths, perhaps for
half a watch. The silence seemed to crush my spirit, a hush
more palpable than the ship. I heard the faint taps of my
own uneven footfalls on the planks and occasionally a
stirring or humming from beneath my feet. Other than
these faint sounds, there was nothing. Ever since I sat
under Master Malrubius's instruction as a child, I have
known that the space between the suns is far from empty;
many hundreds and perhaps many thousands of voyages
are made there. As I learned later, there are other things
too--the undine I twice encountered had told me that she