You pick up the catalog, open it to any page, take a random stab to choose your unexplored world, and take off into the wild blue yonder. Discover a planet, name it after yourself, determine its physical characteristics, do battle with any monsters...
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Chapter 1
Maxim opened the hatch, leaned out, and cautiously scanned the sky. Low-lying and solid-looking, it lacked that airy transparency, suggestive of infinite space and a multitude of inhabited worlds; it was a real biblical firmament, smooth and dense. Undoubtedly, this firmament rested on the powerful shoulders of a local Atlas. It glowed with a steady phosphorescence. Maxim looked for the hole that his ship had pierced, but it was gone; only two large dark blots floated at the zenith like dead bodies in the water. Flinging the hatch wide open, he jumped into the tall dry grass.
The dense hot air smelled of dust, rusted iron, trampled vegetation, life. And of death, long past and incomprehensible. The grass was waist-high. Nearby, dense bushes loomed darkly, and dreary gnarled trees occasionally broke the landscape. It was almost as bright as a clear moonlit night on Earth but without Earth's moon shadows and hazy nocturnal blueness. Everything was gray, dusty, and flat. The ship rested on the bottom of an enormous hollow with sloping sides. The surrounding terrain rose sharply toward a washed-out horizon; the landscape seemed strange because nearby a broad, serene river flowed westward and apparently upward along one slope.
Maxim walked in a circle around the ship, running his palm along its cold damp side. Traces of the impact were where he had expected to find them. There was a deep ugly dent under the sensory ring, sustained when the ship was jolted suddenly and pitched to one side; the cyber-pilot had felt insulted and sulked, and Maxim had to grab the controls quickly. The jagged hole next to the right porthole was made ten seconds later when the ship pitched forward. Maxim looked at the zenith again. The dark blots were scarcely visible now. A meteorite attack in the stratosphere? Probability ― zero point zero zero. But in space, anything theoretically possible would happen sooner or later.
Maxim returned to the cabin and switched on the automatic repair controls and activated the field laboratory. Then he headed toward the river. An adventure of sorts, but still routine. Routinely monotonous and monotonously routine. The unexpected to be expected in the Independent Reconnaissance Unit. Landing accidents, meteorite and radiation attacks ― adventures of the body, merely physical stuff.
The tall brittle grass rustled and crackled beneath his feet and prickly seeds stuck to his shorts. A swarm of midges buzzed in front of his face, but then, as if by a signal, retreated.
The IRU didn't attract solid establishment types. They were wrapped up in their own serious affairs and knew that the exploration of alien worlds was just a monotonous and exhausting game. Yes, monotonously exhausting and exhaustingly monotonous.
Of course, if you are twenty years old, can't do anything well, haven't the vaguest notion of what you really want to do, haven't yet learned the value of time, that most precious of all things, haven't any special talents and don't foresee acquiring any ― if at age twenty you still haven't outgrown the lad stage where your hands and feet are more important than your head; if you are still naive enough to imagine yourself making fabulous discoveries in unexplored space... if, if, if...
