Conklin, Groff (ed) - Possible Worlds of Science Fiction / Конклин, Грофф (ред) - Возможные миры НФ [1951, EPUB, ENG]

Operation Pumice / Операция «Пемза» short story by Raymond Z. Gallun The Black Pits of Luna / Тёмные ямы Луны short story by Robert A. Heinlein Enchanted Village / Зачарованная деревня short story by A. E. van Vogt Lilies of Life / Лилии жизни novelette by Malcolm Jameson Asleep in Armageddon (= Perchance to Dream) / Уснувший в Армагеддоне short story by Ray Bradbury Not Final! / Не навсегда! short story by Isaac Asimov Cones / Конусы short story by Frank Belknap Long Moon of Delirium short story by D. L. James Completely Automatic / Полная автоматизация short story by Theodore Sturgeon The Day We Celebrate short story by Nelson S. Bond The Pillows short story by Margaret St. Clair Proof / Доказательство short story by Hal Clement Propagandist / Парламентёр short story by Murray Leinster In Value Deceived / Продешевили short story by H. B. Fyfe Hard-Luck Diggings / Злополучные рудники short story by Jack Vance Space Rating short story by John Berryman Contagion novelette by Katherine MacLean Limiting Factor / Фактор ограничения short story by Clifford D. Simak Exit Line short story by Sam Merwin, Jr. Second Night of Summer / Вторая ночь лета novelette by James H. Schmitz A Walk in the Dark / Путь во тьме short story by Arthur C. Clarke The Helping Hand / Рука помощи novelette by Poul Anderson

THEY HAD NEVER seen such skies. Glory beyond bright glory, wonder beyond wonder, in the black celestial vault above them. Earth the brightest of all the bright stars; Venus a small, watery green moon suspended in the bottomless depths of the sky; Mars a tiny reddish dot. And all the stars of the Galaxy shining in the brilliant whorls and angles of half-familiar constellations. It was night on Mercury—cold night in a narrow world of infrequent night and day. Across a thin strip on the surface of the Sun’s nearest neighbor there occurred at forty four-day intervals the familiar alternations of sunlight and darkness which Gibbs Crayley and the other members of the First Mercury Exploring Expedition knew and loved on their home planet. The liberations of the little celestial body, which rotated only once on its axis in its eighty eight-day journey about the Sun, Splashed alternate bands of sunlight and dark over a relatively restricted strip of its metallic crust. Where the face of Mercury was forever turned away from the Sun, the temperature was within a few degrees of absolute zero; there oxygen was a fine white snow. On the bright side, continuously under the Sun’s rays, heat blighted and blasted the surface, and no alien shape of protoplasm could live there for long, no matter how well protected by the sciences of man. But on the strip where light and dark alternated, the conditions of climate and temperature were less extreme, and protected human life could exist there, if only for brief periods. Encased in a flexible metallic spacesuit surmounted by a rigid helmet, with fifty-pound weights attached to thighs, and oxygen tanks strapped to shoulders, a man could survive—and explore. . . .