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

"No good, Jock?"
"The public expected the expedition to bring back at least one real live
Martian for them to gawk at. Since they didn't, we need Smith and need him
badly."
"'Live Martians?'" Secretary General Douglas turned to Captain van Tromp.
"You have movies of Martians, haven't you?"
"Thousands of feet."
"There's your answer, Jock. When the live stuff gets thin, trot on the
movies of Martians. The people will love it. Now, Captain, about this
possibility of extraterritoriality: you say the Martians were not opposed to
it?"
"Well, no, sir-but they were not for it, either."
"I don't follow you?"
Captain van Tromp chewed his lip. "Sir, I don't know just how to explain
it. Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get
any argument but you don't get results either."
"Semantic difficulty? Perhaps you should have brought what's-hisname, your
semantician, with you today. Or is he waiting outside?"
"Mahmoud, sir. No, Doctor Mahmoud is not well. A-a slight nervous
breakdown, sir." Van Tromp reflected that being dead drunk was the moral
equivalent thereof.
"Space happy?"
"A little, perhaps." These damned groundhogs!
"Well, fetch him around when he's feeling himself. young man Smith should
be of help as an interpreter."
"Perhaps," van Tromp said doubtfully.

This young man Smith was busy at that moment just staying alive. His body,
unbearably compressed and weakened by the strange shape of space in this
unbelievable place, was at last somewhat relieved by the softness of the nest in
which these others had placed him. He dropped the effort of sustaining it, and
turned his third level to his respiration and heart beat.
He saw at once that he was about to consume himself. His lungs were
beating almost as hard as they did at home, his heart was racing to distribute
the influx, ail in an attempt to cope with the squeezing of space-and this in a
situation in which he was smothered by a poisonously rich and dangerously hot
atmosphere. He took immediate steps.
When his heart rate was down to twenty per minute and his respiration
almost imperceptible, he set them at that and watched himself long enough to
assure himself that he would not inadvertently discorporate while his attention
was elsewhere. When he was satisfied that they were running properly, he set a
tiny portion of his second level on guard and withdrew the rest of himself. It
was necessary to review the configurations of these many new events in order to
fit them to himself, then cherish and praise them-lest they swallow him up.
Where should he start? When he had left home, enfolding these others who
were now his own nestlings? Or simply at his arrival in this crushed space? He
was suddenly assaulted by the lights and sounds of that arrival, feeling it
again with mind-shaking pain. No, he was not yet ready to cherish and embrace
that configuration-back! back! back beyond his first sight of these others who
were now his own. Back even before the healing which had followed his first