"Blish, James - Seeding Program" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

sisted of her essential components, including the personnel
globe, held together by a visible framework of girders and
I-beams. It was one of the longest of the latter, one which
was already pointed toward Howe's H, which would serve as
the "catapult."
Sweeney looked up at the globe of the satellite. The old fa-
miliar feeling of falling came over him for a moment; he
-looked down, reorienting himself to the ship, until it went
away. He'd be going in that direction soon enough.
Meikiejon came around the bulge of the personnel globe,
sliding his shoes along the metal. In his bulky, misshapen
spacesuit, it was he who looked like the unhuman member of
the duo.
"Ready?" he said.
Sweeney nodded and lay face down on the I-beam, snap-
ping the guide-clips on his harness into place around it. He
could feel Meikiejon's mitts at his back, fastening the JATO
unit; he could see nothing now, however, but the wooden sled
that would protect his body from the beam.
"Okay," the pilot said. "Good luck, Sweeney."
"Thanks. Count me off, Mickey."
"Coming up on five seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Hack."
The JATO unit shuddered and dealt Sweeney a nearly par-
alyzing blow between his shoulder-blades. For an instant the
acceleration drove him down into his harness, and the sled
spraddled against the metal of the I-beam.
Then, suddenly, the vibration stopped. He was flying free.
A little belatedly, he jerked the release ring.
The sled went-curving away from under him, dwindling
rapidly among the stars. The pressure at his back cut out as
the JATO unit, still under power, flamed ahead of him. The
instantly-dissipated flick of heat from its exhaust made him
ill for a moment; then it bad vanished. It would hit too hard
to leave anything where it landed but a hole.
Nothing was left but Sweeney, falling toward Ganymede,
head first. '
From almost the beginning, from that day unremember-
ably early in his childhood when he had first realized that
the underground dome on the Moon was all there was to the
universe for nobody but himself, Sweeney had wanted to be
human; wanted it with a vague, impersonal ache which set
quickly into a chill bitterness of manner and outlook at his
unique everyday life, and in dreams with flares of searing
loneliness which became more infrequent but also more in-
tense as he matured, until such a night would leave him as
shaken and mute, sometimes for several days at a stretch, as
an escape from a major accident.
The cadre of psychologists, psychiatrists and analysts as-
signed to him did what they could, but that was not very