Sample translations1 · 2 · 3 · 4 [An excerpt from a science-fiction book] As usual, the journey was instantaneous and overwhelming. The man turned into thoughts and feelings, into memories and consciousness, which flew through space and time like a directed shaft of light. Everything broke down into motley garlands of roaming whims. Nobody knew how the process of shifting from one point to another, covering hundreds and sometimes millions of light years, was accomplished. It was simply another relic of the Visit—along with the instantaneous communications, the matter transformer, and the protection mechanisms under the Oracle’s supervision. Phanagore was no longer among the green meadows. He had hardly opened his eyes when his sight was blurred by the bluish white of some ice fields, and he almost lost his breath because of the hedge—hopping flight of the wind. He gazed at the two suns, setting in the violet sky, and was again awestruck by the rust-colored and wrinkled outline of the satellite of the Planet Pranaharma gracefully rising above the horizon. Phanagore had come across all kinds of planets and was now fully convinced that it was not their virtues and vices but their inhabitants that made them look one way or another. He would never forget how enthusiastically he had been welcomed by the simple—hearted Gathams although they had never before seen a representative of the human race; consequently, he was so attracted to their ungainly and dangerous planet. The lovely Vengrines, although they had no sex, had fascinated him by their remarkable forms and made him fall in love with their matchless perfection. He even felt a craving to stay on their enormous planet despite the hostile conditions. The Pranaharma was also one of the hostile planets, but every time Phanagore came here, he felt a peculiar excitement. It was because Tara lived here. He had met exceptional women and had seen incredible creatures, but Tara occupied a special place in his heart—so special that no one else could replace it. She was a most ordinary woman, but Phanagore felt for her something he did not imagine himself being capable of. He allowed no one else to penetrate so deeply into his heart—not even the irresistible Bikra with whom he had the most passionate love affair. He had shared his feelings with Pocheran who had smiled gently and reminded him how human it was to rove over the worlds in search of the most precious stone only to find out one day that it had been in the palm of your hand all the time. Tara had gone to the Pranaharma to take part in an investigation of one of the most peculiar artifacts in the local Galaxy cluster—the ice mirrors. The Pranaharma was discovered by the Earthly race as a result of an accidentally opened route (if there could be anything accidental with the Oracle) found during a drinking party by some infantile and complacent intellectuals from the fifth colony of the Earth. Although there was no intelligence, the planet presented to the investigators of the Earth some unexpected wonders. Who knows what the first visitor had wished, so that the Oracle had moved him to this frozen wilderness, full of running glaciers instead of flowing rivers, and inhabited by primitive life consisting mainly of insect-like, but very solid organisms that buried themselves deep under the snow cover? With its low gravity—equal to two thirds of the Earth’s gravitation—and its ever-frosted plains and mountain peaks, the Pranaharma would have been an excellent ski resort or an Alpine center, had it not expressed some qualities of a killer planet right at the beginning of its colonization. Initially, even its name was different; it was called Avalanche. Its name Pranaharma came much later. The first problem for the colonists was that the Oracle had a limited power here. Although the route to the five inhabited colonies on the Earth was permanently open and was functioning perfectly, the transport pentagram only provided an access to the planet and nothing more. For the Earthians, used to the convenience of obtaining everything they needed direct from the Oracle, this was a particularly heavy burden. The matter transformer, which was capable of building huge constructions in a couple of minutes or materializing an arbitrary inanimate object as if by a magic wand, seemed to be useless on the planet. The Oracle, who could construct the necessary atoms out of quarks derived from the depths of the vacuum, arrange them into fixed configurations and implicitly materialize the human desires by means of the mobile anti-gravitators and protection fields available on other colonies, was powerless here. |
