|
|
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Japan became the graveyard of the motor car; from island to island, from tip
to tail, from Datsuns to Chryslers, to forty-cylinder cyclotronic hover cars,
dead, silent metal covered the land of the setting sun.
The Arctic Circle was allocated rotting foodstuffs, the Ba-hamas was home to
old sofas and bicycle wheels, Korea took all broken electrical equipment.
Europe got the sewage.
And over the last twenty years, John Ewe had busied himself signing his name
over the corner of that once-great continent.
John Ewe shut down the satellite link, and followed his hairy beer-belly back
to the front of the ship. Before he could reach the safety webbing, a massive
pocket of methane turbulence rocked the refuse craft and sent him staggering
into the first-aid box. He fingered the gash that grinned bloodily on his brow
and invented two new swear words. The methane storms had been getting worse
over the past few years, and he knew he should have consulted the
meteorological computer before he ventured from his safety harness.
As he lurched to his feet, a second methane blast hit the ship under its
belly, sending him stumbling back down the narrow aisle. As he slithered
helplessly backwards, his flailing arm caught the door-release mechanism, and
the cockpit's emer-gency exit swung open.
His fat fingers scrambled for a hand-hold, but found nothing until he slid
through the open doorway, and he grabbed the rim of the footledge.
For thirty seconds he dangled, screaming, over Europe.
Then he dangled no more.
He plunged from the yawing garbage ship, and drowned in his own signature.
'Ewe woz 'ere', it said. And it was right, 'e woz.
The unmanned craft hacked around wildly in the sudden turbulence, the
autopilot stretched beyond its capacity. The methane storm whipped up to
hurricane force and sucked the ship to the ground.
A continent of methane exploded.
The blast triggered off a thermo-nuclear reaction in a thou-sand discarded
atomic-power stations, and the
Earth tore itself from its orbit around the sun, and farted its way out of the
solar system.
Two and a half thousand years of abuse were ended.
The Earth was free.
Free from humankind. Free from civilization.
When it was clear of the sun's influence, it froze in heatless space and
bathed its wounds in a perennial Ice
Age.
On it went, out of the solar system and into Deep Space, carving a path
through the universe, looking for a new sun to call home.
TWO
Lister coughed himself awake. A gargantuan coughing tit forced his body into a
ball and thrashed it about under the heavy quilting of the sleep sheet before
his head finally emerged from under the covers, gasping for air.
Air, it turned out, was the last thing he wanted. It was thick and smoky and
bitter to the taste. His hand scrambled blindly for the bunkside oxygen mask
that dangled above the recessed sleeping couch. He held it to his face and
sucked.
Gradually his vision cleared, and he peeked out into the murk. There was a
hissing sound coming from the floor. Lister drew the blanket around him, knelt
up and craned over the side of the couch to get a closer look. The whole of
the steel-alloy deck was pitted with thin, deep, smoking holes, as if
something were trying to burrow up into the craft from below.
As he watched, something flitted past his face, almost brush-ing his cheek,
landed in a loud fizzle on the deck
and started to tunnel patiently through the reinforced steel.
Page 61
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Lister snapped his head back into the shelter of the recess. His heart thumped
a samba on the xylophone of his ribs. That could have been his head.
He ducked low so the edge of
Starbug's roof edged into his field of vision. Hollow metal stalactites hung
down from the buckled structure, some of them dripping a clear, colourless
liquid on to the
'bug's floor.
Lister shot back and huddled in the corner of the recess.
Acid rain.
But not normal acid rain - this was acid rain. Acid rain of such concentration
it cut through high-density metal as if it were full-fat soft cheese. His eyes
lit on what remained of the high-backed scanner scope chair. It was now a pile
of steaming gloop. Only two nights earlier, he'd fallen asleep on that chair.
That gloop could have been him.
It didn't make sense. Why hadn't the acid rain cut through the bunk roof? Why
had that held out?
Lister looked up, and got his answer. It hadn't. The roof bulged crazily, like
a balloon full of water, and stalactites of corrupted metal pointed their
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
|
|
| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
|
|
