《The Handicapped 》作者： - Larry Niven【EPUB】

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The Handicapped Larry Niven Produced by calibre 0.6.40 THE HANDICAPPED WE FLEW ON skycycles over a red desert, under the soft red sun of Down. I let Jilson stay ahead. He was my guide, and I hadn't been flying a skycycle long. I'm a flatlander. I had spent most of my life in the cities of Earth, where any flying vehicle is illegal unless fully automated. I liked flying. I wasn't good at it yet, but there was plenty of room for mistakes with the desert so far below. "There," said Jilson, pointing. "Where?" "Down there. Follow me." His skycycle swung easily to the left and began to slow and drop. I followed more clumsily, overcorrecting and dropping behind. Eventually I spotted something. "That little cone?" "That's it." From up here the desert looked lifeless. It wasn't, any more than the deserts of most inhabited worlds are lifeless. Down there, invisible at this height, were spiky dry plants with water stored in their cores; flowers that bloomed after a rain and left their seeds to wait a year or ten years for the next rainfall; insect-things with four legs, unjointed; skinny warm-blooded quadrupeds from the size of a fox on down, who were always hungry. There