"C M Kornbluth - Theory Of Rocketry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

THEORY OF ROCKETRY



C. M. KORNBLUTH




Mr. Edel taught six English classes that year atRichardM.NixonHigh School, and the classes averaged
seventy-five pupils each. That was four hundred and fifty boys and girls, but Mr. Edel still tried to have
the names down cold by at least the third week of the semester. As English 308 stormed into his room he
was aware that he was not succeeding, and that next year he would even stop trying, for in 1978 the
classes would average eighty-two pupils instead of seventy-five.



One seat was empty when the chime sounded; Mr. Edel was pleased to notice that he remembered
whose it was. The absent pupil was a Miss Kahn, keyed into his memory by "Kahnsti-pated," which
perhaps she was, with her small pinched features centered in a tallow acre of face. Miss Kahn slipped in
some three seconds late; Edel nodded at his intern, Mrs. Giovino, and Mrs. Giovino coursed down the
aisle to question, berate and possibly demerit Miss Kahn. Edel stood up, the Modern Revised Old
Testament already open before him.



"You're blessed," he read, "if you're excused for your wrongdoing and your sin is forgiven. You're
blessed if God knows that you're not evil and sly any more. I, King David, used to hide my sins from
God while I grew old and blustered proudly all day. But all day and all night too your hand was heavy on
me, God ..."



It would be the flat, crystal-clear, crystal-blank M.R.O.T. all this week; next week he'd read (with more
pleasure) from the Roman Catholic Knox translation; the week after that, from the American Rabbinical
Council's crabbed version heavy with footnotes; and the week after that, back to M.R.O.T. Thrice
blessed was he this semester that there were no Moslems, Buddhists, militant atheists or miscellaneous
cultists to sit and glower through the reading or exercise their legal right to wait it out in the corridor. This
semester the classes were All-American: Protestant, Catholic, JewishтАФchoice of one.



"Amen," chorused the class, and they sat down; two minutes of his fifty-minute hour were gone forever.



Soft spring was outside the windows, and they were restless. Mr. Edel "projected" a little as he told
them, "This is the dreaded three-minute impromptu speech for which English Three Oh Eight is notorious,
young ladies and gentlemen. The importance of being able to speak clearly on short notice should be
obvious to everybody. You'll get nowhere in your military service if you can't give instructions and verbal