《Ghost》作者： - A. Bertram Chandler【EPUB】

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third world of the planetary system of AlphaGruis was unscheduled. No ships ever called at Weldon any more it haddropped from its importance —never a great one—in the scheme ofinterstellar commerce with the exhaustion of its mineral resources. Man hadcome. Man had gutted the planet of its wealth. Man had left.We hoped that the spaceport was still in a fit state for a landing. Wehoped that the supplies of spare parts of repair equipment had notdeteriorated too badly with the passage of the years. We hoped that thePilot Book according to which large quantities of such material had beenleft behind as a cheaper alternative to its being shipped to a quotlivequot planetwas not lying.We could of course have hoped that our Drive would hold out until wereached the busy prosperous worlds of the Centaurian system to which wewere bound. We could have done so—and in all probability made one ofthe swelling number of ships listed as quotOverdue believed lostquot. Nobody isquite sure what happens when the Mannschenn Drive gets out ofcontrol—according to some authorities one is slung into the remote pastaccording to others one finishes up in the remote future. They agree on onepoint — theres no returning.Im no technician but I had been uneasily aware for some time that all wasnot well with the intricacy of spinning precessing wheels that is the Drive.The note—which should be high steady almost supersonic— wavered attimes deepening to a low hum at times rising painfully above normal auralrange. And with almost every action there was the haunting sense offamiliarity the feeling of Ive-done-this-before.I was trying to