Alfred Coppel

Name: The Hills of Home
Author: Alfred Coppel

Summary

“The Hills of Home”, is a work by Alfred Coppel. It explores elements such as Kimmy, the Golden Cliffs and the Plant Men.

Quotes from The Hills of Home (Alfred Coppel)

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ He righted the rocket, balanced it. Began the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his training. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, the internal fires died.
Kimball stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly, the ports opened. Through the thick quartz he could see the endless plain. Reddish brown, empty. The basin of some long ago sea. The sky was a deep, burning blue with stars shining at midday at the zenith. It looked unreal, a painting of unworldly quiet and desolation.
What is reality, Kimmy?
Steinhart was right, he thought vaguely. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ The Valley Dor was blurring, fading. The Golden Cliffs were turning into sandy, river-worn banks. The faucet felt heavy in his grimy hand. He shivered, not with horror now. With cold.
He walked slowly out of the willows, stumbling a little over the rocks.
He lay like an embryo in the viscera of the ship, protected and quite alone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him; and the rocket, silent now, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time was measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimball slept insulated and complete. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ Steinhart said finally. “Happy to be the first man to try for the planets——”
Kimball nodded absently, wishing the man would be quiet. Mars, a dull rusty point of light low on the horizon, seemed to beckon.
They topped the last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl of the launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkered in white and orange, against the first flickerings of the false dawn.
Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low waisted middies and skirts, they looked strange and out of place standing by the pebbled shore of the River Iss. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ Kimball stood now in the bright glare of the briefing shack, a strange figure in blood-colored plastic. The representatives of the press had been handed the mimeographed releases by the PRO and now they sat in silence, studying the red figure of the man who was to ride the rocket.
They were thinking: Why him? Out of all the scores of applicants—because there are always applicants for a sure-death job—and all the qualified pilots, why this one? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ On the dais nearby, listening to the PRO, but watching Kimball, sat Steinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze thinking: They start out burning with desire to cure the human mind and end with the shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy the aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I’m not being fair. Steinhart was only doing his job. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ Disinterest in his voice now, Steinhart noted clinically. Natural under the circumstances? Or neurosis building up already?
“Our tests showed you to be a schizoid—well-compensated, of course. You know there’s no such thing as a normal human being. We all have tendencies toward one or more types of psychoses. In your case the symptoms are an overly active imagination and in some cases an inability to distinguish reality from—well, fancy.”
Kimball turned to regard the psych coolly. “What’s reality, Steinhart? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ The radium pistol’s weight made his wrist ache, but he clung to it tightly, knowing that he [117] could never cope with a Plant Man with a sword alone. The certainty of coming battle made him smile a little, the way John Carter would smile if he were here in the Valley Dor ready to attack the white Therns and their Plant Men.
For a moment, Kimmy felt a thrill of apprehension. The deepening stillness of the river was closing in around him. Even the music from the phonograph was very, very faint. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Alfred Coppel, The Hills of Home

“ And some types (providing the subject is not suffering so extreme a case as to have crossed the border into psychosis) can be not only useful, but perhaps necessary for certain kinds of work....
The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. ”

Alfred Coppel

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Quotes from The Hills of Home (Alfred Coppel)

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