The Martian(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Glasser, Allen

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The Martian试读：

The Martian

The water was evaporated by the ever-shining sun until there was none left for the thirsty plants. Every year more workers died in misery.

The rolling, yellow sand reflected the heat of the sun in little, shimmering waves. It reflected the sun's light blindingly throughout all its visible expanse, with the exception of one spot where lay a circular shadow. In the great steely-blue dome of the sky there were no clouds.

The shadow, although not large, was very dark and distinct. The curved, even line of its circumference was precisely drawn.

In the air was a persistent rattle of sound—a series of closely spaced explosions, ever rising in intensity.

Suddenly a small, uneven shadow detached itself from the circular one; and floated swiftly across the sand. The rattling sound increased to a tremendous booming roar, and the large shadow began to fade. At the same time, the smaller one grew steadily darker.

High above the sand, a man was falling—much too swiftly.

The surface of the sand had been shaped into hills by the prevailing winds. These long, ridge-like hills, or dunes, were convex and gradual in slope on their windward sides, but on their lee sides they were concave, and very steep.

It was near the top of one of these steep slopes that the man landed. His frail legs and body crumpled under the weight of his head; he pitched forward, and half rolled, half slid to the bottom where he came to rest more gently, the target of a small avalanche of sand.

Immediately, he began to struggle; and, failing in his attempts to rise, stretched his slim arms skyward and uttered a sharp, squealing cry, painfully prolonged. Far above him a spherical object rapidly diminished in size. Fixedly he watched the sunlight glinting on its polished grey sides; watched it shrink to a tiny ball, a point, and then—nothing. He was alone.

The pressure was horrible. He buried his head in the hot sand, and clapped his ears in a vain attempt to ease the throbbing pain. They must have underestimated the weight of the Toonian atmosphere if they had expected him to live long here! It did not hurt his body, but his head was being crushed. He knew that he would soon die—and was glad. This wild, senseless punishment would be at an end.

He opened his eyes again, and stared in growing fascination and wonder at the great arched blue dome above him. Gradually the spectacle of this weirdly beautiful canopy occupied his whole attention. It was like a soft curtain of light blue material hiding the blackness of the sky and the gleaming stars;—yet the sun shone through. For a moment he forgot his loneliness, his pain, in rapt contemplation of the immense perfection above him—but only for a moment. Then the explanation came to him. That beautiful blue was the heavy atmosphere of Toon, which was slowly crushing him to death! He closed his eyes.

The heat was terrific, but not as intense as he had expected. Toon was nearer the Sun than was his own world—millions of miles nearer; yet he was not badly burnt, and this puzzled him. The explanation must again lie in the heavy atmosphere—serving as insulation, he finally decided.... He didn't care.

He felt strangely detached. What signifies life—or death—to a tiny being separated by fifty million miles from any of its kind? Deposited on this strange planet, he had no hopes of survival; his only emotion was astonishment that he had lived a moment.

He struggled to remove the parachute that had been so inadequate in easing his fall. Movement—even the raising of an arm was serious effort. He was glued to the ground by the tremendous gravitational pull of a planet so much greater in size than his own. He relaxed.

Why struggle? With the passing of hope, all incentive to effort passes also. He felt no distress at the thought of death. Life, not death, would be freakish in this great wasteland.

And he was past anger now. What they had done to him they had done through hate and fear. Only hate and fear could conceive of so fantastic a torture for a fellow being. There was no satisfaction now in the knowledge that they had feared him; nor did he care about their hate.... They had won. They would have their way, and all the people of the Loten would suffer in consequence....

Loten! A wave of sick loneliness swept over him.... A point in the sky, obscured by a weird curtain of blue—his home!——————————

Certainly, no man had ever suffered thus! A surge of self-pity welled up within him. Certainly no being had ever been forced to long for the world—the globe which gave it birth! This horror was reserved for him alone....

He clenched his fists. Reason returned to rescue him from emotion. Loten did not exist for him. He was outside of the world—a tiny flame of consciousness in space. And what did that amount to, after all, he asked himself.... What, but Death?...

For a long time he lay there in the sand, quite motionless.

The sun was sinking. Its blazing heat was abating somewhat; its face was large, and red. For miles, across the surface of the sand, the shadows of the dunes were stretching out.... And out of the sunset a tiny speck of black appeared.

Where he lay the man heard the sound of it—a steady drone, or buzz. At first it did not catch his attention, its inception was so gradual; but soon it became a roar, and he opened his eyes with a start. He had heard no sound since the departure of the space ship—had expected none. An uneasy excitement gripped him. He strained his eyes upward....

Suddenly, over the dune against which he lay, there shot a something, roaring thunderously. He cowered down, stunned by the terrific sound of it; but he watched it with wide eyes, as it moved across the sky.

It was T-shaped; with the cross-piece going before. Beneath it hung two wheels. It gleamed metallically.

Without attempting to rise, he howled shrilly, time after time, catching his breath in gasps—while the thing moved steadily away.

Following an undeviating line, it left him far behind, diminished to a speck, and disappeared. The sound of it lingered when he could see it no longer.

His breath came quickly, spasmodically, through parted lips; his throat was tight, and his heart pounded. The staggering surprise of what he had seen and heard left him incapable of thought. His mind was a racing turmoil of questions. His contentment, his resignation were gone—destroyed in a moment; and in their place rose a great uneasiness.

The return of Hope, to a man who has definitely put it away from him, is a joy closely akin to pain in its intensity. His whole body shook as he struggled with the sand, attempting to rise.

He had seen a machine, he knew. It could not have been an animal. It was not alive, and it was made of metal.... A machine meant reasoning beings. There must be reasoning beings on Toon—where Loten's scientists had argued that they could not be! And machines that travelled through space! Perhaps....

As the new possibilities of his situation burst upon him, his homesickness returned a thousandfold; and he knew that he could rest no longer—could not wait in the sand for death. He must struggle—he must strive, until the end came—because there was a chance!

Immediately, his mind became purposeful, and he took stock of his position. He knew that the whole of Toon was not like this great stretch of sand. Thousands of years of observation of the bright planet had convinced the scientists of the Loten that it bore vegetation—and probably animal life of some sort....

But rational beings! His astonishment re-asserted itself. Five thousand years of systematic signalling had brought no response, and the project had lately been abandoned. Yet....

He shook his head, and returned to his problem. He must not waste time now.

He had food enough in his stomach to last three days at least, and he would not need water for even longer. He suddenly realized, with enormous satisfaction, that the pain in his head was considerably less than at first. Perhaps his system would be able to adjust itself to the atmospheric pressure....

The great question was where—and how—to go. He must go somewhere. Only motion would satisfy his craving for accomplishment of some sort. He would get no help on this great, sterile plain. He had no guarantee that another of the flying machines would come near him, and even if it did there was not much hope of attracting its attention. No, he must move....

He decided to follow in the direction the machine had taken. Its destination might be near-by—or it might be thousands of miles away. The probability seemed to be in favor of the former hypothesis, because the machine had been moving so very slowly.... Anyway, it was a chance!

Pulling his legs up under him, he made another determined attempt to rise; and finally succeeded in standing erect. But it made his legs ache terribly; and when he tried a step he slipped, falling back with a jarring thud.

He would have to crawl.——————————

Ridding himself of the parachute, and with no further hesitation, he set out, crawling slowly and laboriously, keeping the sun at his back.

The heat was less oppressive now. The sun had sunk to a point where its rays were no hotter than at midday on his Loten; and he marvelled at the similarity of the two climates. He had seen none of the water vapors that astronomers described as almost constantly enveloping Toon. Toon—what he had seen of it—seemed to be as dry as the Loten, if not more so.

He climbed the long, gradual slope of a dune; and, after surveying the endless stretch of sand which met his view at the top, slid down the steep side, and crawled doggedly on.

Night was falling. The blue dome above him steadily darkened until it began to take on the appearance of his own native sky.

He was dead tired within an hour. He lay still for a time, breathing deeply—marshalling his strength. He was in excellent physical condition, but here his body was so heavy that the slightest motion was a strain. Soon, however, his eager spirit drove him onward.

At the end of another hour, happening to raise his head, he uttered an involuntary cry. Points of light glimmered in the sky.... So he was to see the stars after all!—though only at night, it seemed. He was relieved. In the back of his mind had been the ever-growing certainty that he would not be able to keep a direct course. He rested again, and picked out certain designs that would be helpful as guides.

He wondered if one of them were Loten. They were very dim and they blinked strangely; and their arrangement was meaningless to him. He fixed upon one of them—the brightest—and imagined that it might be his world—where his friends were, and his enemies; where his wives grieved for him perhaps; where his children laughed and played; where he might one day return....

He crawled along through the sand.

It was not really dark—only twilight. He wondered if this were night on Toon. It must be. Almost directly ahead of him—just a little to the right—was a radiance close to the horizon. It puzzled him. Soon it was spreading over the sky—a pale, ghostly light. Then a bright point appeared—a line; it grew. He stared in abject wonder while a great, white disk mounted into the sky, illuminating the scene around.

He rested a while, and watched it. It was Toon's satellite. It could be nothing else. But beside it the two luminaries of his own world were as pygmies. He was still watching it, fascinated, when he resumed his journey.CHAPTER II.Signs of Life

All through the night he travelled; and into the rising sun. The noonday heat forced him to take a prolonged rest, but he fought on as soon as possible; and sunset found him crawling weakly onward. The cool of night revived him somewhat. He knew that the strain under which he labored would hasten his time of sleep, and that worried him. Even now, he was often in a semi-conscious state. Still, he could not stop.

When the sun rose again, it shone through trees; and far across the yellow sand his tired eyes saw green hills. The sight invigorated him—spurred him on to stronger efforts. Soon after midday he lay panting in the shade of trees.

The trees astonished him. They towered above him, fully five times as high as any he had ever seen. Their stems were of enormous girth—rough and hard to the touch. There seemed to be something moving in their heavy foliage, far above him, and he heard faint, sharp whistling sounds. He looked around uneasily.

The size of the trees worried him. If there were animal life, it might be proportionately large. He shuddered. The desert, although uncomfortable, had had one advantage: he had been alone there.

Still, it was not loneliness that he was seeking, he thought grimly. Obviously, he....

He stiffened. He had been staring abstractedly at the coarse grass which grew thickly around him. Now his eyes became focussed upon a movement there—not three feet away. The grass was waving strangely, in a peculiar, uneven line; and he caught sight of something slim and green, that was not the grass. His throat contracted painfully. The thing did not seem to move, yet it was coming nearer. Whenever he caught sight of a part of its body, it appeared stationary; yet the waving of the grass was closer, and ever closer. It was very close now....

Suddenly his power of locomotion returned. He rolled over backward, and scrambled along the ground to a tree. Grasping the rough trunk, he pulled himself erect; and held himself in that position, panting.

He could see the thing more plainly now. It was like a long, green whip in the grass. Its forepart was raised in the air, and terminated in a triangular head, with two bright eyes whose steady, unwinking stare made him tremble weakly. With an effort he took his eyes from the creature; and, pushing himself away from the tree, ran desperately, as far as his legs would carry him. When he fell, he continued to crawl—farther, and ever farther into the green woods.

He wondered if all creatures crawled in this world of Toon. Perhaps the great gravitational pull made erect postures impossible.

For a long time he climbed steadily, threading his way through the underbrush, skirting fallen trees. He felt increasingly drowsy. His sleep period would come soon, he knew. He could not stave it off much longer. And when he had slept, he must eat....

He came to level ground. Ahead was an opening in the trees, where a wide ledge of stone was revealed. Out upon this he crawled, and gazed at the scene that opened out below. Miles of waving tree tops met his view; but what held his attention was a strip of silver cutting the green.

He felt a warm glow of satisfaction. Water, in his mind, was closely associated with organization, transportation facilities, reasoning beings....

Yet he must be wary. He had no idea what sort of beings they might be. This might be a canal, but it was strangely irregular in its course. At least he was making progress....

A peculiar, ringing sound came from the trees below. It was utterly unfamiliar to him. Nerving himself, he determined to discover what it was. He climbed down from the stone, and began the journey down the hill.

As he progressed the sound became louder, and others were added. He was puzzled by a low, intermittent muttering. It made him vaguely uneasy, and with every moment his agitation increased. The muttering was now very definitely spaced into irregular but continuous tones.

And he knew that he was listening to a conversation.

He was frightened. Now that he was so near to what he had been seeking, his courage left him; and he lay trembling, flat on the ground, awed by the booming voices of the creatures.

They must be very large, he thought, to utter such deep tones.

He had lain there for perhaps five minutes, when, suddenly, there came a rending crash; and, peering ahead, he saw the green top of a tree sway violently, sink, and disappear from sight. At the same time there came a louder cry, followed by the blending of two thunderous voices, speaking simultaneously.... Then a heavy thud, and another cry....——————————

He crawled cautiously forward. He reached the fallen tree. Its trunk was suspended above the ground by the projection of a number of its large branches. He peered beneath it.

Directly before him, in a small clearing, two creatures were struggling together. They stood erect upon their huge legs, using their crudely bulky arms and hands to strike and tug at each other. They were tremendous in size—fully three times human stature; yet their heads were smaller than men's. Their erect posture gave them a weirdly half-human look, which was belied by the brutal savagery of their aspects. Their brows were low; their heads were covered with long hair; and in their gaping mouths he saw rows of sharp, white fangs. Their skin, instead of being golden, was a dirty grey in color, and was covered with short curling hair or fur.

But he could see very little of their bodies, because—and this sight seemed to him the strangest of all—they were almost entirely covered with cloth. This woven material was brown in color, and shaped to hang close to their bodies, even over the arms and legs. He lay very still, watching the titanic struggle with ever growing wonder.

They appeared to be evenly matched. Once, one of them was hurled heavily to the ground, but he leaped effortlessly to his feet. Both

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