"David,.Peter.-.Fantastic.Four.the.Movie" - читать интересную книгу автора (David Peter)

head, the better off vou're both gonna be."
Much of her discussion that she'd had with Johnny- or at least as much as she was capable of remembering through the haze of that evening-had come back to her. Although her professional demeanor aboard the shuttle would never have revealed it, she kept glancing over at Reed the entire time and wondering what he was thinking. Whether he was thinking about her. What precisely was going through that mind of his.
And as she did so, she felt nothing but growing annoyance with herself. There was no reason for her to be attaching this much importance to what Reed thought, or how Reed felt, or to Reed at all. He should be the one who was coming to her, presuming he was interested. Even if he was. who was to say she was?
Well, that was the problem at its core, wasn't it? She wasn't sure how she felt, and the issue now was that Johnny was, just perhaps, a small bit right. She hadn't been putting up shields, exactly, but she certainly hadn't been giving Reed the slightest indication that she was remotely interested or even receptive. Reed was rather clueless when it came to such matters even under the best of circumstances, and these certainly weren't those.
It made her smile inwardly. Some people might change, mature, polish up their act over the years. Not Reed. He was pretty much exactly as she remembered him when she'd first approached him as a young grad student, at the Hayden Planetarium. She'd noticed him sitting in the planetarium's auditorium, long after the show was over, just staring and staring at where the stars had been. She knew who he was, of course. Everyone did. She'd come out and spoken to him, which was a major thing for Sue, because he intimidated the hell out of her. She got the sense, though, that it was a far more level playing field than she'd expected: She was daunted by his intellect, whereas he was daunted by the fact that she was a female.
Still, he spoke to her in such a pedantic manner that, by the time the maintenance staff was shooing them away, she'd figured this had been a huge mistake . . . right up to the point where he'd looked at her in a hopeful, puppy-dog manner and asked in a whispered voice devoid of the pedant, "Am I impressing you?" She'd re-

alized then that he'd been eager to please her, and yet clueless how to go about doing so. When they'd gone on their actual first date, naturally they'd gone back to the planetarium . . . although she did some prep work first, just in case. If he went back into pedant mode, she wanted to be able to keep up with him.
How in the world had things gone so remarkably downhill from there?
All this tumbled through Sue's head as the shuttle docked with the space station.
It wasn't long before they were moving through the narrow corridors of the space station with bouncing ease, thanks to the slightly lower gravity. Victor Von Doom was by her side, as he always seemed to be whenever they were working on a project.
They were heading toward the command center, and she winced inwardly as she heard Johnny speaking to Ben Grimm in the tone of voice that a father would use to an annoying child.
"If you behave," he told Ben, "maybe next time Dad-dy'll let you drive."
"Keep talking," Ben shot back, "there won't be a next time."
johnny, don't go looking for trouble. It never has problems finding you even under the best of circumstances. As she silently begged him for restraint, Sue suspected that she'd have had the exact same luck with getting him to display it whether she spoke or just thought hard at him. Then, as she glanced around, she noticed that they had

of thousands of miles below. "Recording, sir. We see you perfectly."
Victor Von Doom glanced up at a camera mounted into the console. Johnny was sure he saw the guy adjust his hair out of reflex. Sue, meanwhile, was busy checking over the computer banks with her customary confidence and precision. Johnny hadn't been privy to the remainder of her "dicussion" with Reed, but hoped rather mean-spiritedly that it had not gone well. "We can monitor the cloud's approach." Sue told Victor, "and observe the tests from here."
Ben Grimm, might)' pilot, sounded positively nervous as he asked, "Is it safe?"
Tell him, hell no, we're probably all going down in flames, Johnny begged his sister.
But she ignored, or simply didn't know about, his silent entreaty. It was Reed who spoke up. Fortunately for Johnny, he did so with one of his famed explanations that always made things sound worse. "The shields on the station should protect us," he said with an air of confidence that didn't seem quite in line with the actual words he was saying.
Ben naturally picked up on the discrepancy. "Should?"
Just as naturally, Von Doom couldn't allow even the slightest degree of discomfort on Grimm's part to pass unremarked. Oozing false joviality, he clapped a hand on Ben's shoulder and asked, "What's wrong, Ben? Eighty million dollars worth of equipment not enough for you?"

Whatever humor Victor was seeing in the moment was obviously eluding Ben Grimm. Johnny had never seen two people both looking at each other as if they were each bugs they would just as soon step on, but there it was. It was different frames of mind, though. Ben wanted to step on Victor in anger, whereas Victor would just as soon have stepped on Ben just to show that he could.
Before the tension could escalate into a relative bug-squishing contest, however, Reed intervened. He didn't exactly change the subject so much as move the same subject further along. "Let's start loading those samples. Get your suit ready, Ben."
Von Doom clearly wasn't ready to let it go. "So you still do all the heavy lifting?" he asked Ben with a tone that suggested he was prepared to recommend a good chiropractor if the strain on Grimm was too great.
Ben could have been carved from stone for all the response he made. Obviously he knew that Von Doom was just trying to get a rise out of him.
If Victor was dissatisfied that Ben wasn't reacting in the desired manner, he didn't show it. Ben may well have been stone, but Victor's face was a mask. He turned to Reed, patting him patronizingly, and said, "Maybe you should have stayed back in the lab. Field work never suited you."
Defending Reed in a way he hadn't been willing to for himself, Ben Grimm said, "He does the talking, I do the walking. Got it?"
Victor's smile never flinched, even though Ben was clearly seething. Why should he? What was Ben going to do, really? Knock his face in? Von Doom was holding all the cards. "Got it," he said coolly. "So take a walk, Ben." Having lost interest in the conversation, Von Doom said to no one in particular, "I'm going to borrow Susan for a second."
"Sure," said Reed.
Johnny watched Reed for some small reaction as Victor Von Doom walked out with Sue, one arm draped around her shoulder in an affectionate-even slightly intimate-fashion. But there was nothing.
Well, really, why should there be? After all, Reed was only interested in his great scientific ambitions. Everyone-Ben Grimm, Victor Von Doom, Johnny Storm- they were all just a means to that end.
Minutes later, Johnny was standing near the air lock, watching Ben putting on a helmet and boots, preparing for a space walk. Johnny was busy unloading a set of clear sample boxes from a cart, each containing a variety of plants.
"Why do you stick with him?" Johnny asked.
Ben disdained to look at him. "Because he's the real deal."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yeah. You do," said Ben, and this time he did afford Johnny a brief glance. "And you know he is, and you know you're not."
"I'm not?" Johnny said derisively. "How do you know I'm not?"
" 'Cause if ya were, you wouldn't have to ask."
Johnny bristled, but kept his smug calm in place.
"Please tell me your dawg's not trying to rekindle things with my sister."
"My 'dawg' was named Mickey, after Mantle, and he died way too young when a jerk just like you-not you, but you're a dime-a-dozen-hit him with his motorcycle. So that was it for my 'dawg.' If ya mean Reed, who ain't a dawg or dog or whatever slang makes ya sound cool, the answer is, 'Course not. Strictly business.'"
"Yeah, well, his eyes say different."
"Hey, two hearts got busted last time," Ben reminded him with a shrug. "Maybe she's not over it either."
"Let's see," said Johnny, holding out both hands as if they were two sides of a scale. "You got Victor, stud of the year, more coin than God." He dipped his right hand down to reflect the weight of Victor Von Doom. "Or Reed, the word's dumbest smart guy worth less than a postage stamp." The left hand, representing Reed, naturally was on eye level. He "weighed" the two hands and said sarcastically, "Hmmm. It's a toss-up."
"Put your tiny little mind at ease," said Ben. He placed the helmet over his head, the discussion clearly over, and clicked it into place.
"Don't you wander off, boy," Johnny cautioned him, as if Ben could hear him. Ben wasn't paying any attention to him, though. Instead he was facing the air lock door that would be opening within moments, allowing him to step out into space and do his job.
Ben moved out of the air lock and shut the door behind him. Through a small window, Johnny watched. Ben still wasn't looking at him, but obviously he'd been able to hear the door shut, because with his back turned he gave a confident thumbs-up. Johnny triggered the exterior air lock hatch, and it irised open. The void of space laid out before him, Ben Grimm confidently strode out into it