"Robert A. Heinlein - Have Space Suit Will Travel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

I heard the M.C. saying, " -- present the lucky winner, Mrs. Xenia
Donahue, of Great Falls, Montana...Mrs. Donahue!"
To a fanfare a little dumpy woman teetered out. I read the cards again.
They still matched the one in my hand. I said, "Dad, what happened? That's my
slogan."
"You didn't listen."
"They've cheated me!"
"Be quiet and listen,"
" -- as we explained earlier, in the event of duplicate entries,
priority goes to the one postmarked first. Any remaining tie is settled by
time of arrival at the contest office. Our winning slogan was submitted by
eleven contestants. To them go the first eleven prizes. Tonight we have with
us the six top winners -- for the trip to the Moon, the weekend in a satellite
space station, the jet flight around the world, the flight to Antarctica, the
-- "
"Beaten by a postmark. A postmark!"
" -- sorry we can't have every one of the winners with us tonight. To
the rest this comes as a surprise." The M.C. looked at his watch. "Right this
minute, in a thousand homes across the land...right this second -- there is a
lucky knock on a lucky door of some loyal friend of Skyway -- "
There was a knock on our door.
I fell over my feet. Dad answered. There were three men, an enormous
crate, and a Western Union messenger singing about Skyway Soap. Somebody said,
"Is this where Clifford Russell lives?"
Dad said, "Yes."
"Will you sign for this?"
"What is it?"
"It just says 'This Side Up.' Where do you want it?"
Dad passed the receipt to me and I signed, somehow. Dad said, "Will you
put it in the living room, please?"
They did and left and I got a hammer and sidecutters. It looked like a
coffin and I could have used one.
I got the top off. A lot of packing got all over Mother's rugs. At last
we were down to it.
It was a space suit.
Not much, as space suits go these days. It was an obsolete model that
Skyway Soap had bought as surplus material -- the tenth-to-hundredth prizes
were all space suits. But it was a real one, made by Goodyear, with air
conditioning by York and auxiliary equipment by General Electric. Its
instruction manual and maintenance-and-service log were with it and it had
racked up more than eight hundred hours in rigging the second satellite
station.
I felt better. This was no phony, this was no toy. It had been out in
space, even if I had not. But would! -- someday. I'd learn to use it and
someday I'd wear it on the naked face of the Moon.
Dad said, "Maybe we'd better carry this to your workshop. Eh, Kip?"
Mother said, "There's no rush, dearest. Don't you want to try it on,
Clifford?"
I certainly did. Dad and I compromised by toting the crate and packing
out to the barn. When we came back, a reporter from the Clarion was there with