"Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land - Original Ve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

ONCE UPON A TIME when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith.
Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one.
The first human expedition from Terra to Mars was selected on the theory
that the greatest danger to man in space was man himself. At that time, only
eight Terran years after the founding of the first human colony on Luna, any
interplanetary trip made by humans necessarily had to be made in weary free-fail
orbits, doubly tangent semi-ellipses--from Terra to Mars, two hundred fifty-
eight days, the same for the return journey, plus four hundred fifty-five days
waiting at Mars while the two planets crawled slowly back into relative
positions which would permit shaping the doubly-tangent orbit-a total of almost
three Earth years.
Besides its wearing length, the trip was very chancy. Only by refueling at
a space station, then tacking back almost into Earth's atmosphere, could thi5
primitive flying coffin, the Envoy, make the trip at all. Once at Mars she might
be able to return-if she did not crash in landing, if water could be found on
Man to fill her reaction-mass tanks, if some sort of food could be found on
Mars, if a thousand other things did not go wrong.
But the physical danger was judged to be less important than the
psychological stresses. Eight humans, crowded together like monkeys for almost
three Terran years, had better get along much better than humans usually did. An
all-male crew had been vetoed as unhealthy and sociaily unstable from lessons
learned earlier. A ship's company of four married couples had been decided on as
optimum, if the necessary specialties could be found in such a combination.
The University of Edinburgh, prime contractor, sub-contracted crew
selection to the Institute for Social Studies. After discarding the chaff of
volunteers useless through age, health, mentality, training, or temperament, the
Institute still had over nine thousand candidates to work from, each sound in
mind and body and having at least one of the necessary special skills. It was
expected that the Institute would report several acceptable four-couple crews.
No such crew was found. The major skills needed were astrogator, medical
doctor, cook, machinist, ship's commander, semantician, chemical engineer,
electronics engineer, physicist, geologist, biochemist, biologist, atomics
engineer, photographer, hydroponicist, rocket engineer. Each crew member would
have to possess more than one skill, or be able to acquire extra skills in time.
There were hundreds of possible combinations of eight people possessing these
skills; there turned up three combinations of four married couples possessing
them, plus health and intelligence.-but in all three cases the group-dynamicists
who evaluated the temperament factors for compatibility threw up their hands in
horror.
The prime contractor suggested lowering the compatibility figure-ofmerit;
the Institute stiffly offered to return its one dollar fee. In the meantime a
computer programmer whose name was not recorded had the machines hunt for three-
couple rump crews. She found several dozen compatible combinations, each of
which defined by its own characteristics the couple needed to complete it. In
the meantime the machines continued to review the data changing through deaths,
withdrawals, new volunteers, etc.
Captain Michael Brunt, M.S., Cmdr. D. F. Reserve, pilot (unlimited
license), and veteran at thirty of the Moon run, seems to have had an inside
track at the Institute, someone who was willing to look up for him the names of
single female volunteers who might (with him) complete a crew, and then pair his