Resena: Back there, on one of the hills of Earth, he had held his mother's hand tightly, watching one bright spark after another climb the sky and burst into the coloured stars that enchanted him as they floated lazily down. There were other fireworks, but it was the rockets that he loved and for which he cried, "More! More!" till the show was ended and he was coaxed protesting, away. Next day he had come back to search the ground and find the fallen cases, sad, empty cylinders of cardboard, soaked by the dew, blackened and sour-smelling. For him the attraction of such displays did not pall as he grew. When he was a college student he had still watched them. Even after he had graduated and secured his first spaceship appointment, he had gone to watch. There had been a girl with him. What was her name? Molly - that was it. They had stood arm in arm, looking at the show organised as a celebration for victory in World War III. It was not so long ago, though very far away. Remembering this, Taylor, the assistant engineer, had for a while almost forgotten the threatening present. He lay on his couch, a dark, slim, virile young man; in the dimness he could just see the ceiling of his hut. Through one wide window stars showed in thick clusters above the dark side of the planet; through another window he could just see the spaceship Colonist, whose long voyage had ended here. It stood like a slim monument out there beyond the village of huts that had been built by the hundred-odd members of its crew in the reservation that had been allotted to them by those whom they had found in possession. He lay quite still, summoning up that vision, seeing rockets that were not the power units of spaceships with which his training had made him familiar, but things of fleeting beauty. He was relaxed in body, but his mind was unquiet. On this planet, Bel, sleep was unknown. But rest was still necessary, especially for the latest arrivals, and periods of repose had been arranged by their Captain, Lyon. Taylor had found that during these periods he could induce a dreamlike state that was sometimes comforting. This time, however, it seemed to have been a mistake. He was moving among disturbing memories. It would have been better to have forgotten. But how could he forget that time with Molly? It had a special poignancy, because for him it had been the last time. Before the next anniversary he had himself climbed the sky in a rocket on the first stage of the journey that had ended here. And for Molly, as for all those on Earth, all victory days were ended. There had been the final day of defeat, when the whole globe had become a firework, a burnt-offering to the genius of destructive Man. Now it was a dead cinder that circled the Sun, with sterile winds that blew aimlessly across its surface, driving the mingled, uneasy dust. He sighed and then filled his lungs with the unsatisfying air. Why must he think of these things? To escape he tried to retrace the steps that his mind had taken. Was it the analogy between rockets of different kinds, or that between the burnt scraps of cardboard and...? But that was not how he came to pursue the train of thought. No, it was the light - the half- light. Of course, that was it.

Idioma: Español
Categoría: Lengua y Literatura,

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