Английский язык с Э. Р. Берроузом. Принцесса Марса

Each adult Martian female brings forth about thirteen eggs each year, and those which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity tests are hidden in the recesses of some subterranean vault where the temperature is too low for incubation. Every year these eggs are carefully examined by a council of twenty chieftains, and all but about one hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each yearly supply. At the end of five years about five hundred almost perfect eggs have been chosen from the thousands brought forth. These are then placed in the almost air-tight incubators to be hatched by the sun's rays after a period of another five years. The hatching which we had witnessed today was a fairly representative event of its kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching in two days. If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of the fate of the little Martians. They were not wanted, as their offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency to prolonged incubation, and thus upset the system which has maintained for ages and which permits the adult Martians to figure the proper time for return to the incubators, almost to an hour.

The incubators are built in remote fastnesses (инкубаторы строятся в отдаленных крепостях; fastness — крепость, твердыня), where there is little or no likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes (там, где существует малая вероятность или нет /вероятности/ их обнаружения другими племенами). The result of such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community for another five years (результат такой катастрофы означал бы, что у общины не будет детей в течение следующих пяти лет). I was later to witness the results of the discovery of an alien incubator (позже мне придется стать свидетелем результатов такого обнаружения чужого инкубатора).

The community of which the green Martians, with whom my lot was cast, formed a part (община, часть которой составляли зеленые марсиане, с которыми меня свела судьба; lot — жребий, судьба; to cast — бросать, кидать; to cast lot with — разделить судьбу; lot — жребий) was composed of some thirty thousand souls (состояла примерно из тридцати тысяч душ). They roamed an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land (они скитались по огромному пространству засушливых или полузасушливых земель; tract — участок, пространство; arid — сухой, безводный) between forty and eighty degrees south latitude (между сороковым и восьмидесятым градусами южной широты), and bounded on the east and west by two large fertile tracts (которые граничили с востока и запада с двумя большими участками плодородной земли; to bound — ограничивать, служить границей). Their headquarters lay in the southwest corner of this district (их штаб-квартира располагалась в юго-западной части этого района; corner — угол; часть, район), near the crossing of two of the so-called Martian canals (возле пересечения двух так называемых Марсианских каналов).

likelihood ['laIklIhud], latitude ['lxtItju: d], headquarter ['hed" kwO: tq]