"Robert F. Young - The Worlds of Robert F. Young" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

plain into a vast midnight-blue tablecloth and transformed the city into a silvery candelabrum. He was
captivated all over again.
The mystery of those distant empty buildings and silent forsaken streets crept across the plain and
touched his marrow. What had happened to the inhabitants? he wondered. What had happened to the
inhabitants of the other broken cities he had seen while the ship was orbiting in?
He shook his head. He did not know, and probably he never would. His ignorance saddened him,
and suddenly he could no longer endure the poignancy of the plain and the uninterrupted silence of the
night, and he crept into the ship and closed the door behind him. For a long time he lay In the darkness of
his stateroom, thinking of the people of Earth; of the noble civilization that had come and gone its way
and bad left nothing behind it but a handful of crystal memories. Finally be slept.

When he went outside the next morning there were twenty-four beer trees growing in front of the
ship.
The classification had leaped automatically into Captain Frimpf's mind. He had never seen beer trees
before, in fact he had never even heard of them; but what better name could you give to a group of large
woody plants with bottles of amber fluid hanging from their branches like fruit ready to be plucked?
Some of the fruit had already been plucked, and there was a party in progress in the young orchard.
Moreover, judging from the row of little hummocks along the orchard's edge, more seed had been
planted.
The captain was dumfounded. How could any kind of soilтАФeven Earth soilтАФgrow beer trees
overnight from empty bottles? He began to have a glimmering of what might have happened to the people
of Earth.
Pempf came up to him, a bottle in each hand. "Here, try some, sir," he said enthusiastically. "You
never tasted anything like it!"
The captain put him in his place with a scathing glance. "I'm an officer, Pempf. Officers don't drink
beer!"
"Oh. IтАФI forgot, sir. Sorry."
"You should be sorry. You and those other two! Who gave you permission to eatтАФI mean to
drinkтАФEarth fruit?"
Pempf hung his head just enough to show that he was repentant, but not any more repentant than his
inferior status demanded. "No one, sir. IтАФI guess we kind of got carried away."
"Aren't you even curious about how these trees happened to come up? You're the expedition's
chemistтАФwhy aren't you testing the soil?"
"There wouldn't be any point in testing it, sir. A topsoil with properties in it capable of growing trees
like this out of empty beer bottles is the product of a science a million years ahead of our own. Besides,
sir, I don't think it's the soil alone that's responsible. I think that the sunlight striking on the surface of the
moon combines with certain lunar radiations and gives the resultant moonlight the ability to replenish and
to multiply anything planted on the planet."
The captain looked at him. "Anything, you say?"
"Why not, sir? We planted empty beer bottles and got beer trees, didn't we?"
"Hmm," the captain said.
He turned abruptly and re-entered the ship. He spent the day in his stateroom, lost in thought, the
busy schedule he had mapped out for the day completely forgotten. After the sun had set, he went
outside and buried all the credit notes he had brought with him in back of the ship. He regretted that he
hadn't had more to bring, but it didn't make any difference really, because as soon as the credit trees
bloomed he would have all the seed he needed.
That night, for the first time in years, he slept without dreaming about his grocery bill and his taxes.

But the next morning when he hurried outside and ran around the ship he found no credit trees
blooming in the sunlight. He found nothing but the little hummocks he himself had made the night before.