"Donald E. Wollheim - The Secret of the ninth Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wollheim Donald A)

The world was reading about other things than the vagaries of the weather. In
the United States, baseball occupied the headlines, and the nonathletic-minded
could find some speculative interest in the completion of another manned space
platform racing along in its eternal orbit twelve thousand miles away from
Earth's surface. The U.S. Moon Base in the center of the Crater Ptolemaeus had
described the appearance of this platform in an interesting radio dispatch which
appeared on the first pages of most newspapers. The third prober rocket sent to
Venus had been unreported for the tenth day after penetrating the clouds that
hid that planet's surface from human eyes. It was, like its two predecessors, a
minimum-sized, unmanned instrument device designed to penetrate the clouds and
radio back data on the nature of the Venusian atmosphere and the surface. But
after its first report, nothing more had been heard.
Some discussion was going on in science circles about what had happened.
Speculation centered on the possible success of other types of prober rockets,
but it was universally agreed that the time had not come when a manned rocket
could safely undertake the difficult trip to Venus and return.
The years of space flight since the orbiting of Sputnik I back in 1957 had
produced many fascinating results, but they had also brought a realization of
the many problems that surrounded the use of rockets for space flight. It was
generally believed that no one should risk a manned flight until absolutely
everything possible that could be learned by robot and radio-controlled missiles
had been learned. It now looked as if Venus and Mars trips were still a dozen
years away.
Burl Denning was keenly interested in all of this. As a senior in high school,
the newly expanding frontiers of the universe represented something special to
his generation. It would be men of his own age who would eventually man those
first full-scale expeditions to neighbor worlds. By the time he was out of
college, with an engineering degree, he might himself hope to be among those
adventurers of space.


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Burl was torn between two interests. Archaeology was both a profession and a
hobby in the Denning family. His grandfather had been among the first to explore
the jungle ruins of Indochina. His father, although a businessman and industrial
engineer, made annual vacation pilgrimages to the ruins of the old Indian
civilizations of the Americas. Burl had been with him once before, when they had
trekked through the chicle forests of Guatemala in search of a lost Mayan city.
And now they were again on a quest, this time for the long-forgotten treasure of
the Incas.
Burl was thoroughly familiar with the techniques of tracking down the ancient
records of mankind. He got along well with natives and primitive people; he knew
the arts of wilderness survival; he knew the delicate techniques of sifting sand
and dirt to turn up those priceless bits of pottery and chipped stone that could
supply pages of the forgotten epics of human history.
However, later in the day it seemed as if their particular camp had petered out.
There were ruins there-- a broken-down wall, a dry well and a bit of eroded
bas-relief lying on its side. Burl's father looked at him thoughtfully. The