"Heinlein, Robert A - The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

"Weren't you on relay?"

"Didn't set it. Didn't want to be bothered." He steps to the house phone,
plays back his calls, finds nothing he cares to bother with Ч but the
machine goes ahead and prints one message; he pulls it out and tears it
off.

"What is it?" his wife asks.

"Telestat from Luna City Ч from Aunt Jane."

"What does she say?"

"Nothing much. According to her, the Moon is a great place and she wants us
to come visit her."

"Not likely!" his wife answers. "Imagine being shut up in an
air-conditioned cave."

"When you are Aunt Jane's age, my honey lamb, and as frail as she is, with
a bad heart thrown in, you'll go to the Moon and like it. Low gravity is
not to be sneezed at Ч Auntie will probably live to be a hundred and
twenty, heart trouble and all."

"Would you go to the Moon?" she asks.

"If I needed to and could afford it." He turns to you. "Right?"

You consider your answer. Life still looks good to you Ч and stairways are
beginning to be difficult. Low gravity is attractive, even though it means
living out your days at the Geriatrics Foundation on the Moon. "It might be
fun to visit," you answer. "One wouldn't have to stay."

Hospitals for old people on the Moon? Lets not be silly Ч

Or is it silly? Might it not be a logical and necessary outcome of our
world today?

Space travel we will have, not fifty years from now, but much sooner. It's
breathing down our necks. As for geriatrics on the Moon, for most of us no
price is too high and no amount of trouble is too great to extend the years
of our lives. It is possible that low gravity (one sixth, on the Moon) may
not lengthen lives; nevertheless it may Ч we don't know yet Ч and it will
most certainly add greatly to comfort on reaching that inevitable age when
the burden of dragging around one's body is almost too much, or when we
would otherwise resort to an oxygen tent to lessen the work of a worn-out
heart.

By the rules of prophecy, such a prediction is probable, rather than
impossible.