Citizen in Spase. Stories / Гражданин в Космосе. Рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Now, I just select my brushes, set up my canvas, and I can paint anything that appeals to me. Everything you have to do is in the book. The oils I have of sunsets here are spectacular. They’re good enough for a gallery. You never saw such sunsets! Flaming colors, impossible shapes! It’s all the dust in the air.

My ears are better, too. Didn’t I say I was lucky? The eardrums were completely shattered by the first concussion. But the hearing aid I wear is so small you can hardly see it, and I can hear better than ever.

This brings me to the subject of medicine, and nowhere has science done a better job. The book tells me what to do about everything. I performed an appendectomy on myself that would have been considered impossible a few years ago. I just had to look up the symptoms, follow the directions, and it was done. I’ve doctored myself for all sorts of ailments, but of course there’s nothing I can do about the radiation poisoning. That’s not the fault of the books, however. It’s just that there’s nothing anyone can do about radiation poisoning. If I had the finest specialists in the world here, they couldn’t do anything about it.

If there were any specialists left. There aren’t, of course.

It isn’t so bad. I know what to do so that it doesn’t hurt. And my luck didn’t run out or anything. It’s just that everyone’s luck ran out.

Well, looking over this, it doesn’t seem much of a credo, which is what it was meant to be. I guess I’d better study one of those writing books. I’ll know how to say it all then, as well as it can be said. Exactly how I feel about science, I mean, and how grateful I am. I’m thirty-nine. I’ve lived longer than just about everyone, even if I die tomorrow. But that’s because I was lucky, and in the right places at the right times.

I guess I won’t bother with the writing book, since there’s no one around to read a word of manuscript. What good is a writer without an audience?

Photography is more interesting.

Besides, I have to unpack some grave-digging tools, and build a mausoleum, and carve a tombstone for myself.

Hands Off

The ship’s mass detector flared pink, then red. Agee had been dozing at the controls, waiting for Victor to finish making dinner. Now he looked up quickly. “Planet coming,” he called, over the hiss of escaping air.

Captain Barnett nodded. He finished shaping a hot patch, and slapped it on Endeavor’s worn hull. The whistle of escaping air dropped to a low moan, but was not entirely stopped. It never was.

When Barnett came over, the planet was just visible beyond the rim of a little red sun. It glowed green against the black night of space and gave both men an identical thought.

Barnett put the thought into words. “Wonder if there’s anything on it worth taking,” he said, frowning.

Agee lifted a white eyebrow hopefully. They watched as the dials began to register.

They would never have spotted the planet if they had taken Endeavor along the South Galactic Trades. But the Confederacy police were becoming increasingly numerous along that route and Barnett preferred to give them a wide berth[20].

The Endeavor was listed as a trader – but the only cargo she carried consisted of several bottles of an extremely powerful acid used in opening safes, and three medium-sized atomic bombs. The authorities looked with disfavor upon such goods and they were always trying to haul in the crew on some old charge – a murder on Luna, larceny on Omega, breaking and entering on Samia II. Old, almost forgotten crimes that the police drearily insisted on raking up.

To make matters worse, Endeavor was outgunned by the newer police cruisers. So they had taken an outside route to New Athens, where a big uranium strike had opened.

“Don’t look like much,” Agee commented, inspecting the dials critically.

“Might as well pass it by,” Barnett said.

The readings were uninteresting. They showed a planet smaller than Earth, uncharted, and with no commercial value other than oxygen atmosphere.

As they swung past, their heavy-metals detector came to life.

“There’s stuff down there!” Agee said, quickly interpreting the multiple readings. “Pure. Very pure – and on the surface!”

He looked at Barnett, who nodded. The ship swung toward the planet.

Victor came from the rear, wearing a tiny wool cap crammed on his big shaven head. He stared over Barnett’s shoulder as Agee brought the ship down in a tight spiral. Within half a mile of the surface, they saw their deposit of heavy metal.

It was a spaceship, resting on its tail in a natural clearing.

“Now this is interesting,” Barnett said. He motioned Agee to make a closer approach.