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

The essential ingredients are these: A person must be in unusual and desperate peril. The peril must have
duration. There must be proof that the person is still alive. Rescue attempts must be made. Publicity must
be widespread.

One could probably be constructed artificially, but if the world ever discovered the fraud, it would never
forgive.

Like many others, I have tried to analyze what makes a niggling, squabbling, callous race of beings
suddenly share that most human emotion of sympathy, and, like them, I have not succeeded. Suddenly a
distant stranger will mean more than their own comfort. Every waking moment, they pray: Live, Floyd!
Live, Kathy! Live, Rev!

We pass on the street, we who would not have nodded, and ask, "Will they get there in time?"

Optimists and pessimists alike, we hope so. We all hope so.

In a sense, this one was different. This was purposeful.

Knowing the risk, accepting it because there was no other way to do what had to be done, Rev had
gone into the cave of night. The accident was that he could not return.

The news came out of nowhereтАФliterallyтАФto an unsuspecting world. The earliest mention the historians
have been able to locate was an item about a ham radio operator in Davenport, Iowa. He picked up a
distress signal on a sticky-hot June evening.

The message, he said later, seemed to fade in, reach a peak, and fade out:

". . . and fuel tanks empty.тАФceiver broke. . . transmitting in clear so someone can pick this up, and. . . no
way to get back. . . stuck. . ."

A small enough beginning.

The next message was received by a military base radio watch near Fairbanks, Alaska. That was early in
the morning. Half an hour later, a night-shift worker in Boston heard something on his short-wave set that
sent him rushing to the telephone.

That morning, the whole world learned the story. It broke over them, a wave of excitement and concern.
Orbiting 1,075 miles above their heads was a man, an officer of the United States Air Force, in a fuelless
spaceship.

All by itself, the spaceship part would have captured the world's attention. It was achievement as
monumental as anything Man has ever done and far more spectacular. It was liberation from the tyranny
of Earth, this jealous mother who had bound her children tight with the apron strings of gravity.

Man was free. It was a symbol that nothing is completely and finally impossible if Man wants it hard
enough and long enough.

There are regions that humanity finds peculiarly congenial. Like all Earth's creatures, Man is a product
and a victim of environment. His triumph is that the slave became the master. Unlike more specialized