《The Hand 》作者：- Robert F. Young【EPUB】

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The sun is a fiery chrysanthemum, Earth is a lonely bluebell. And Starmaster sits in the hand of God—or does he? THE hand lay supine upon the black lap of space, its craglike fingers towering high above the vast depression—or cwm, as mountaineers would call it—of its palm. A massive ridge formed the thumb. It was a right hand, so perfect as to have been sculptured by Michelangelo—a star-flung fragment of his David, magnified hundreds of thousands of times. For hours Starmaster had watched the asteroid from the bridge of the muleship, had seen it grow gradually from a distance-blurred chunk of rock into its present conformation. He could not help but be impressed. He had seen asteroids shaped like castles, asteroids shaped like ships and asteroids shaped like animals—but he had never seen one that looked as though it had been sculptured into the likeness of a macrocosmic hand. Even for an atheist like himself it was impossible to look upon it and not entertain, however briefly, the notion that it was the right hand of God. The notion angered him. He kicked it contemptuously out of his mind and returned his attention to the muleship's matter-detector. It was beeping loudly. It had been beeping for hours. Its sound had guided him to the hand. For five years he