"Robert F. Young - Prisoners of Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

we shall never leave Earth
as long as we compute escape velocity in miles per hours . . .
 Nonsense, Larry thought. Utter nonsense. Like all the rest of her poetry. And yet, illogically, an
obscure publishing house had brought out a collection of her most aberrant verse under the title of The
Prisoners of Earth. Nor had they stopped with one collection. A year later another had appeared.
Equations.
Larry bent back an offending low branch until it snapped. Equations! The book had turned out to be
even more esoteric than The Prisoners of Earth had been. At least The Prisoners had resembled
poetry, even though not a single one of its lines had rhymed. Equations didn't resemble anything at all.
"Mass Man" for instanceтАФ

Homo Sapiens / Technological Culture equals Mass Man

and then there was the one on "Earth"тАФ

Earth x 1,000,000 equals Earth

and the one on "Escape Velocity"тАФ

Technological Progress / Emotional Maturity = Escape Velocity

The trees thinned out and he found himself on the green shoulder of a sparkling brook. He paused,
staring down into the dancing water, the equations fading from his mind. There were always brooks in the
milieus Karen chose when she ran awayтАФbrooks and trees and meadows, lakes and gentle hills.
Suddenly he had the feeling that he was reenacting an old, old scene out of an old, old play. The name of
the play was Karen and its basic plot was girl-leaves-boy, boy-looks-for-and-finds-girl.
They had performed the play in so many places, against so many backgrounds . . . The first place
had been the Tetkov reservation of Alpha Centauri 4, and the background had consisted of lazy rivers
winding among tumbled hills and green traceries of trees in serpentine valleys. Karen had joined the
Tetkov nomads in that performance, and Larry had found her, after weary, heart-breaking months,
creditless and starving in a little Tetkov town.
He had taken her back to Earth, and after several months he began to think that one experience in
"going native" had permanently cured her of her Weltschmerz. She was docile, and she smiled at the right
times and laughed when she was supposed to, and she no longer made unintelligible remarks when
galactic civilization was the topic of conversation. He even began to believe that she was going to be
worth the five thousand credits he had paid her father for her after all.
And then she had run away and the play had begun all over again.
The background for that performance had been Heaven, the third moon of Sirius 9. Heaven was the
twenty-third psalm minus the valley of the shadow of death. It was a place of green pastures and still
waters. It was blue sky and gentle terrain and soft winds breathing out of the south from morning till night,
and a big safe night that was only a shade less bright than day.
When he finally found her Karen was living on the reservation which the Earth Supreme Council had
set aside for the natives. She was a shepherdess. She was wearing a shining white robe and hand-made
native sandals, and she was holding a primitive shepherd's staff. She was the most beautiful thing he had
ever seen, and when he saw her he wanted to cry.
And then he had seen the disillusionment in her eyes, the pain; and for the first time he had noticed the
bleak steel ribs of the new Interstellar Trade Building rising in the distanceтАФ

The dancing water threw flecks of sunlight into his eyes and Larry turned away. He began walking
along the green shoulder of the bank, the ground rising slowly beneath his feet. The grass was knee-deep