Gostaria de saber o título e autor de uma pequena história que li há muito tempo.
"Equipe de coleta" "Catch 'em All Alive!" por Robert Silverberg , publicado pela primeira vez em Super-ficção científica , dezembro de 1956 ; a reimpressão em Ficção científica autêntica # 81, junho de 1957 está disponível no Arquivo da Internet .
São cerca de 3 homens no espaço. Eles foram enviados para diferentes planetas para capturar outros organismos em diferentes planetas. Presumivelmente para trazer de volta à Terra e colocar em zoológicos.
Davison disappeared back into the storage hold, while Holdreth scribbled furiously in the logbook, writing down the co-ordinates of the planet below, its general description, and so forth. Aside from being a collecting team for the zoological department of the Bureau of Interstellar Affairs, we also double as a survey ship, and the planet down below was listed as unexplored on our charts.
O navio em que eles estão se divide.
I stood there thinking about nothing at all for a moment, then went inside myself to begin setting up the blastoff orbit.
I got as far as calculating the fuel expenditure when I noticed something. Feedwires were dangling crazily down from the control cabinet. Somebody had wrecked our drive mechanism, but thoroughly.
For a long moment, I stared stiffly at the sabotaged drive.
Eles percebem que os animais do planeta, em vez de fugir, curiosamente caminham até eles. Os animais são amigáveis e fáceis de capturar.
He put the animal down--it didn't scamper away, just sat there smiling at us—and looked at me. He ran a hand through his fast-vanishing hair. "Listen, Gus, you've been gloomy all day. What's eating you?"
"I don't like this place," I said.
"Why? Just on general principles?"
"It's too easy, Clyde. Much too easy. These animals just flock around here waiting to be picked up."
Eles não podem consertar a espaçonave
That night, the three of us stood guard in the control-room together. The drive was smashed anyway. The wires were soldered in so many places by now that the control panel was a mass of shining alloy, and I knew that a few more such sabotagings and it would be impossible to patch it together any more—if it wasn't so already.
e depois de alguns dias, um dos homens tenta suicídio cortando seus pulsos. Sua tentativa falha.
I entered his cabin. He was sitting at his desk, shaking convulsively, staring at the two streams of blood that trickled in red spurts from his slashed wrists.
"Clyde!"
He made no protest as I dragged him toward the infirmary cabin and got tourniquets around his arms, cutting off the bleeding. He just stared dully ahead, sobbing.
Eles olham para fora do planeta e encontram suas casas que tinham na Terra.
The following morning I rose early and got my tool-kit. My head was clear, and I was trying to put the pieces together without much luck. I started toward the control cabin.
And stopped.
And looked out the viewport.
I went back and awoke Holdreth and Davison. "Take a look out the port," I said hoarsely.
They looked. They gaped.
"It looks just like my house," Holdreth said. "My house on Earth."
Os homens percebem que foram capturados por alienígenas e que deveriam viver neste "zoológico alienígena".
"Forget the giraffes. They tried to warn us, but it's too late. They're intelligent beings, but they're prisoners just like us. I'm talking about the ones who run this place. The super-aliens who made us sabotage our own ship and not even know we're doing it, who stand someplace up there and gape at us. The ones who dredged together this motley assortment of beasts from all over the galaxy. Now we've been collected too. This whole damned place is just a zoo—a zoo for aliens so far ahead of us we don't dare dream what they're like."