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

Besides its wearing length, the trip was very chancy. Only by refueling at a
space station, then tacking back almost into EarthтАЩs atmosphere, could this
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 shipтАЩs 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, shipтАЩs 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
name with these to run trial problems through the machines to determine
whether or not a possible combination would be acceptable. This would
account for his action in jetting to Australia and proposing marriage to Doctor
Winifred Coburn, a horse-faced spinster semantician nine years his senior.
The Carlsbad Archives pictured her with an expression of quiet good humor
but otherwise lacking in attractiveness.
Or Brant may have acted without inside information, solely through that trait
of intuitive audacity necessary to command an exploration. In any case lights
blinked, punched cards popped out, and a crew for the Envoy had been
found: