（外文电子版资料）Kuttner, Henry - The Well of the Worlds.doc

THE WELL OF THE WORLDS by Henry Kuttner, 1952 I Outside the hotel window Clifford Sawyer could see the lights of Fortuna burning in the Pole’s noonday darkness along all the plank paths of the little mining camp, glowing blue in the hospital windows, shining yellow in bunk houses and offices. He couldn’t see the mine, of course, from here, but he could feel it. That deep, steady, almost sub-sensory whump-whump-whump had never stopped, day or night, for seventeen years now, since the mine was first opened in 1953. A great many people wanted uranium ore. The government needed its share, too, and the pumps never stopped, down under the frozen cap of the world. Reflected in the glass, he saw the girl behind him stir impatiently. He turned his gaze back toward her, thinking that he had never seen eyes quite the shape and color of Klai Ford’s. There was a touch of exoticism about her which he had been trying in vain to place, remembering what he had read yesterday in the files of the Royal Atomic Energy Commission, back in Toronto, about the curious background of this girl who had inherited half a uranium mine a few months ago. She had smooth, caramel-colored hair. Her brow was bland and her eyes round, confiding and a singularly deep blue. Sawyer liked the way her front teeth stuck out ever so slightly, in an appealing sort of way that made him think of the ill-fated Lise Bolkonskaya in War and Peace, whose pretty little upper lip was too short for her teeth. The planes of Klai Ford’s cheeks and the way the round eyes were set fascinated him. He had never seen just those structural lines before in any face on earth, and his experience had been wide. Sawyer smiled at her. He had very white teeth in a very brown face, and his hair and eyes were a few shades lighter than his skin. About him was that relaxed air of alertness a man acquires who has reached a satisfactory compromise with life, and knows there will always be more compromises to make, as long as life lasts. “I’