JК
The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! ) :: Bester Alfred
Страница: 7 из 164and one hundred and seventydays adrift in space. He was Gully Foyle, the oiler, wiper, bunkerman; too easy for trouble, too slow for fun, too empty for friendship, too lazy for love. The lethargic outlines of his character showed in the official Merchant Marine records:
FOYLE, GULLIVER - AS-128/127:006
EDUCATION:NONE
SKILLS:NONE
MERITS:NONE
RECOMMENDATIONS: NONE
(PERSONNEL COMMENTS)
A man of physical strength and intellectual potential stunted by lack of ambition. Energiaes at minimuro. The stereotype Common Man. Some unexpected shock might possibly awaken him, but Psych cannot find the key. Not recommended for promotion. Has reached a dead end.
He had reached a dead end. He had been content to drift from moment to moment of existence for thirty years like some heavily armored creature, sluggish and indifferent, Gully Foyle, the stereotype Common Man, but now he was adrift in space for one hundred and seventy days, and the key to his awakening was in the lock. Presently it would turn and open the door to holocaust.
The spaceship «Nomad» drifted halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Whatever war catastrophe had wrecked it had taken a sleek steel rocket, one hundred yards long and one hundred feet broad, and mangled it into a skeleton on which was mounted the remains of cabins, holds, decks and bulkheads. Great rents in the hull were blazes of light on the sunside and frosty blotches of stars on the darkside. The S.S. «Nomad» was a weightless emptiness of blinding sun and jet shadow, frozen and silent.
The wreck was filled with a floating conglomerate of frozen debris that hung within the destroyed vessel like an instantaneous photograph of an explosion. The minute gravitational attraction of the bits of rubble for each other was slowly drawing them into clusters which were periodically torn apart by the passage through them of the one survivor still alive on the wreck, Gulliver Foyle, AS-i z8/i 27 :oo6.
He lived in the only airtight room left intact in the wreck, a tool locker off the main-deck corridor. The locker was four feet wide, four feet deep and nine feet high. It was the size of a giant's coffin. Six hundred years before, it had been judged the most exquisite Oriental torture to imprison a man in a cage that size for a few weeks. Yet Foyle had existed in this lightless coffin for five months, twenty days, and four hours.
«Who are you?»
«Gully Foyle is my name.»
«Where are you from?»
«Terra is my nation.»
«Where are you now?»
«Deep space is my dwelling place.
FOYLE, GULLIVER - AS-128/127:006
EDUCATION:NONE
SKILLS:NONE
MERITS:NONE
RECOMMENDATIONS: NONE
(PERSONNEL COMMENTS)
A man of physical strength and intellectual potential stunted by lack of ambition. Energiaes at minimuro. The stereotype Common Man. Some unexpected shock might possibly awaken him, but Psych cannot find the key. Not recommended for promotion. Has reached a dead end.
He had reached a dead end. He had been content to drift from moment to moment of existence for thirty years like some heavily armored creature, sluggish and indifferent, Gully Foyle, the stereotype Common Man, but now he was adrift in space for one hundred and seventy days, and the key to his awakening was in the lock. Presently it would turn and open the door to holocaust.
The spaceship «Nomad» drifted halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Whatever war catastrophe had wrecked it had taken a sleek steel rocket, one hundred yards long and one hundred feet broad, and mangled it into a skeleton on which was mounted the remains of cabins, holds, decks and bulkheads. Great rents in the hull were blazes of light on the sunside and frosty blotches of stars on the darkside. The S.S. «Nomad» was a weightless emptiness of blinding sun and jet shadow, frozen and silent.
The wreck was filled with a floating conglomerate of frozen debris that hung within the destroyed vessel like an instantaneous photograph of an explosion. The minute gravitational attraction of the bits of rubble for each other was slowly drawing them into clusters which were periodically torn apart by the passage through them of the one survivor still alive on the wreck, Gulliver Foyle, AS-i z8/i 27 :oo6.
He lived in the only airtight room left intact in the wreck, a tool locker off the main-deck corridor. The locker was four feet wide, four feet deep and nine feet high. It was the size of a giant's coffin. Six hundred years before, it had been judged the most exquisite Oriental torture to imprison a man in a cage that size for a few weeks. Yet Foyle had existed in this lightless coffin for five months, twenty days, and four hours.
«Who are you?»
«Gully Foyle is my name.»
«Where are you from?»
«Terra is my nation.»
«Where are you now?»
«Deep space is my dwelling place.