Big Planet

Начало книги

Arthur Hidders, he called himself. He wore Earth-style clothes, and, except for the length of his hair and his mustache rings, he looked the complete Earthman— which, in a sense, he was. His age was indeterminate; the exact panel of races which had gone into his make-up was a secret six hundred years gone. He stood an easy five foot six; he was light, with delicate features centered rather too closely in a large round head, which obviously held many brains.

Turning away from the porthole out on space, he fixed old Pianza with a gaze of almost child-like ingenuousness. “That’s all very interesting—but doesn’t it seem, well, futile?”

“Futile?” Pianza said with great dignity. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

Hidders made a careless gesture, taking few pains to hide his opinion of Pianza: a well-meaning man, perhaps a trifle dense. “Earth-Central has sent commissions to Big Planet once a generation for the last five hundred years. Sometimes the commission returns alive, more often not. In either case nothing is accomplished. A few investigators lose their lives, much money is spent, Big Planet tempers—forgive me—are ruffled, and things go on, regrettably, as before.”

Читать дальше →