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

They're trying to open a tin of pineapple and Harris has left the can opener
back in London. They try several ways." He started to read aloud and I sneaked
out -- I had heard that passage five hundred times. Well, three hundred.
I went to my workshop in the barn and thought about ways. One way was to
go to the Air Academy at Colorado Springs -- if I got an appointment, if I
graduated, if I managed to get picked for the Federation Space Corps, there
was a chance that someday I would be ordered to Lunar Base, or at least one of
the satellite stations.
Another way was to study engineering, get a job in jet propulsion, and
buck for a spot that would get me sent to the Moon. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of
engineers had been to the Moon, or were still there -- for all sorts of work:
electronics, cryogenics, metallurgy, ceramics, air conditioning, as well as
rocket engineering.
Oh, yes! Out of a million engineers a handful got picked for the Moon.
Shucks, I rarely got picked even playing post office.
Or a man could be an M.D., or a lawyer, or geologist, or toolmaker, and
wind up on the Moon at a fat salary -- provided they wanted him and nobody
else. I didn't care about salary -- but how do you arrange to be number one in
your specialty?
And there was the straightforward way: trundle in a wheelbarrow of money
and buy a ticket.
This I would never manage -- I had eighty-seven cents at that moment --
but it had caused me to think about it steadily. Of the boys in our school
half admitted that they wanted to space, half pretended not to care, knowing
how feeble the chances were -- plus a handful of creeps who wouldn't leave
Earth for any reason. But we talked about it and some of us were determined to
go. I didn't break into a rash until American Express and Thos. Cook & Son
announced tourist excursions.
I saw their ads in National Geographic while waiting to have my teeth
cleaned. After that I never was the same.
The idea that any rich man could simply lay cash on the line and go was
more than I could stand. I just had to go. I would never be able to pay for it
-- or, at least, that was so far in the future there was no use thinking about
it. So what could I do to be sent?
You see stories about boys, poor-but-honest, who go to the top because
they're smarter than anyone in the county, maybe the state. But they're not
talking about me. I was in the top quarter of my graduating class but they do
not give scholarships to M.I.T. for that -- not from Centerville High. I am
stating a fact; our high school isn't very good. It's great to go to -- we're
league champions in basketball and our square-dance team is state runner-up
and we have a swell sock hop every Wednesday. Lots of school spirit.
But not much studying.
The emphasis is on what our principal, Mr. Hanley, calls "preparation
for life" rather than on trigonometry. Maybe it does prepare you for life; it
certainly doesn't prepare you for CalTech.
I didn't find this out myself. Sophomore year I brought home a
questionnaire cooked up by our group project in "Family Living" in social
studies. One question read: "How is your family council organized?"
At dinner I said, "Dad, how is our family council organized?"
Mother said, "Don't disturb your father, dear."