《The Lost Earthman》作者： - Robert F. Young【EPUB】

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The Lost Earthman BY ROBERT F. YOUNG When they debriefed him they were struck first of all by the look in his eyes. It was the look of aman who had died and come back from death. In a sense this was true even though Rowe had beenspared physical death. When the Demeters meteor-damaged engine had disintegrated killing Olms andStacy who were Outside trying to repair it and dooming the spacecraft to remain in Mars orbit formillennia Rowe had been inside the module and hadnt suffered a scratch. He had been spared physicaldeath only to die psychologically. Damage to the module itself had been slight but the sophisticated AUDORB communication systemhad been knocked out and Rowe lacked the know-how to repair it. Months alone with no one to talkto but himself the scarred and fractured face of Mars filling one window the indifferent deeps of spacethe other a bone-chilling glimpse now and then of the skulls of the Martian moons the spacesuitedcorpses of his fellow astronauts trailing behind the Demeter out of sight but not out of mind. Yes in asense Rowe had died. But the look in his eyes was as nothing compared to the words that came out of his mouth. Thedebriefers impugned those words over and over again. Tried repeatedly to put to rout his quotrevelation.quotTo no avail. For Rowe was convinced that the Weltansicht he had arrived at was the Truth. He had notarrived at it early or easily but he had arrived at it and having arrived he was there to stay. Ultimately they humored him. Aside from his obsession he was demonstrably sane. Moreover hewas a national hero. But they told him that for the time being the quotthumbprintquot and the quotFloodquot mustremain classified information the fact that he had mentioned neither to the members of the rescue teamindicated that