"James E. Gunn - Station In Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

blasting rocket. Another trains men for maneuvering in the weightlessness of space. A third duplicates the
cramped, sealed conditions of a spaceship cabin. Out of the final five, you were the only one who
qualified.

No, Rev, if any of us could stay sane, it was you.

There were thousands of suggestions, almost all of them useless. Psychologists suggested self-hypnotism;
cultists suggested yoga. One man sent in a detailed sketch of a giant electromagnet with which Rev's ship
could be drawn back to Earth.

General Finch had the only practical idea. He outlined a plan for letting Rev know that we were listening.
He picked out Kansas City and set the time. "Midnight," he said. "On the dot. Not a minute earlier or
later. At that moment, he'll be right overhead."

And at midnight, every light in the city went out and came back on and went out and came back on
again.

For a few awful moments, we wondered if the man up there in the cave of night had seen. Then came the
voice we knew now so well that it seemed it had always been with us, a part of us, our dreams and our
waking.
The voice was husky with emotion:

"Thanks. . . Thanks for listening. Thanks, Kansas City. I saw you winking at me. I'm not alone. I know
that now. I'll never forget. Thanks."

And silence then as the ship fell below the horizon. We pictured it to ourselves sometimes, continually
circling the Earth, its trajectory exactly matching the curvature of the globe beneath it. We wondered if it
would ever stop.

Like the Moon, would it be a satellite of the Earth forever?

We went through our daily chores like automatons while we watched the third stage of the rocket take
shape. We raced against a dwindling air supply, and death raced to catch a ship moving at 15,800 miles
per hour.

We watched the ship grow. On our television screens, we saw the construction of the cellular fuel tanks,
the rocket motors, and the fantastic multitude of pumps, valves, gauges, switches, circuits, transistors,
and tubes.

The personnel space was built to carry five men instead of one man. We watched it develop, a Spartan
simplicity in the middle of the great complex, and it was as if we ourselves would live there, would watch
those dials and instruments, would grip those chair-arm controls for the infinitesimal sign that the
automatic pilot had faltered, would feel the soft flesh and the softer internal organs being wrenched away
from the unyielding bone, and would hurtle upward into the cave of night.

We watched the plating wrap itself protectively around the vitals of the nose section. The wings were
attached; they would make the ship a huge, metal glider in its unpowered descent to Earth after the job
was done.

We met the men who would man the ship. We grew to know them as we watched them train; saw them