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

"Stop it," said Dad.
I shut up.
"There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate
preparation to cope with a statistical universe. Do you intend to enter this?"
"Do I!"
"I assume that to be affirmative. Very well, make a systematic effort."
I did and Dad was helpful -- he didn't just offer me more meat loaf. But
he saw to it I didn't go to pieces; I finished school and sent off
applications for college and kept my job -- I was working after school that
semester at Charton's Pharmacy -- soda jerk, but also learning about pharmacy.
Mr. Charton was too conscientious to let me touch anything but packaged items,
but I learned -- materia medica and nomenclature and what various antibiotics
were for and why you had to be careful. That led into organic chemistry and
biochemistry and he lent me Walker, Boyd and Asimov -- biochemistry makes
atomic physics look simple, but presently it begins to make sense.
Mr. Charton was an old widower and pharmacology was his life. He hinted
that someone would have to carry on the pharmacy someday -- some young fellow
with a degree in pharmacy and devotion to the profession. He said that he
might be able to help such a person get through school. If he had suggested
that I could someday run the dispensary at Lunar Base, I might have taken the
bait. I explained that I was dead set on spacing, and engineering looked like
my one chance.
He didn't laugh. He said I was probably right -- but that I shouldn't
forget that wherever Man went, to the Moon, on Mars, or the farthest stars,
pharmacists and dispensaries would go along. Then he dug out books for me on
space medicine -- Strughold and Haber and Stapp and others. "I once had ideas
along that line. Kip," he said quietly, "but now it's too late."
Even though Mr. Charton was not really interested in anything but drugs,
we sold everything that drugstores sell, from bicycle tires to home permanent
kits.
Including soap, of course.
We were selling darned little Skyway Soap; Centerville is conservative
about new brands -- I'll bet some of them made their own soap. But when I
showed up for work that day I had to tell Mr. Charton about it. He dug out two
dustcovered boxes and put them on the counter. Then he phoned his jobber in
Springfield.
He really did right by me. He marked Skyway Soap down almost to cost and
pushed it -- and he almost always got the wrappers before he let the customer
go. Me, I stacked a pyramid of Skyway Soap on each end of the fountain and
every coke was accompanied by a spiel for good old Skyway, the soap that
washes cleaner, is packed with vitamins, and improves your chances of Heaven,
not to mention its rich creamy lather, finer ingredients, and refusal to take
the Fifth Amendment. Oh, I was shameless! Anybody who got away without buying
was deaf or fast on his feet.
If he bought soap without leaving the wrappers with me he was a
magician. Adults I talked out of it; kids, if I had to, I paid a penny for
each wrapper. If they brought in wrappers from around town, I paid a dime a
dozen and threw in a cone. The rules permitted a contestant to submit any
number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or
reasonable facsimile.