"Stanislaw Lem - Tales of Pirx the Pilot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

He was standing in his unpressurized suit on the metal catwalk, just under the hangar ceiling, and,
with neither hand free, was bracing himself against the cable railing with his elbow. In one hand he held
his navigation book, in the other the cribsheet Smiga had lent him. The whole school was alleged to have
flown with this pony, though how it managed to find its way back every time was a mystery, all the more
so since, after completing the flight test, the cadets were immediately transferred from the Institute to the
north, to the Base Camp, where they began cramming for their final exams. Still, the fact remained: it
always came back. Some claimed that it was parachuted down. Facetiously, of course.
To kill time while he stood on the catwalk, suspended above a forty-meter drop, he wondered
whether he would be frisked -- sad to say, such things were still a common practice. The cadets were
known for sneaking aboard the weirdest assortment of trinkets, including such strenuously forbidden
things as whiskey flasks, chewing tobacco, and pictures of their girl friends. Not excluding cribsheets, of
course. Pirx had already exhausted a dozen or so hiding places -- in his shoes, between his stocking legs,
in the inner pocket of his space suit, in the mini-atlas the cadets were allowed to take aboard. . . An
eyeglass case. . . now that would have done the trick, he thought, but, first of all, it would have had to be
a fair-sized one, and secondly -- he didn't wear glasses. A few seconds later it occurred to him that if he
had worn glasses he never would have been admitted to the Institute.
So Pirx stood on the metal catwalk and waited for the CO to show up in the company of both
instructors. What was keeping them? he wondered. Lift-off was scheduled for 1940 hours, and it was
already 1927. Then it dawned on him that he might have taped the cribsheet under his arm, the way little
Yerkes did. The story went that as soon as the flight instructor went to frisk him, Yerkes started
squealing he was ticklish, and got away with it. But Pirx had no illusions; he didn't look like the ticklish
type. And so, not having any adhesive tape with him, he went on holding the pony in his right hand, in the
most casual way possible, and only when he realized that he would have to shake hands with all three did
he switch, shifting the pony from his right to his left hand and the navigation book from left to right. While
he was juggling things around, he managed to make the catwalk sway up and down like a diving board.
Suddenly he heard footsteps approaching from the other end, but in the dark under the hangar ceiling it
took him a while to make out who it was.
All three were looking very spiffy -- as was customary on such occasions, they were decked out
in full uniform -- especially the CO. Even uninflated, however, Pirx's space suit looked as graceful as
twenty football uniforms stuck together, not to mention the long intercom and radiophone terminals
dangling from either side of his neck ring discon-nect, the respirator hose bobbing up and down in the
region of his throat, and the reserve oxygen bottle strapped tightly to his back -- so tightly that it pinched.
He felt hotter than blazes in his sweat-absorbent underwear, but most bothersome of all was the gadget
making it unnecessary for him to get up to relieve himself -- which, considering the sort of single-stage
rockets used on such trial flights, would have posed some-thing of a problem.
Suddenly the whole catwalk began to undulate as someone came up from behind. It was Boerst,
suited up in the same, identical space suit, who gave him a stiff salute, mammoth glove and all, and who
went on standing in this position as if just aching to knock Pirx overboard.
When the others had gone ahead, Pirx asked, somewhat bewilderedly:
"What're you doing here? Your name wasn't on the flight list."
"Brendan got sick. I'm taking his place."
Pirx was momentarily flustered. This was the one area -- the one and only area -- in which he
was able to climb just a millimeter higher, to those empyreal realms that Boerst seemed to inhabit so
effortlessly. Not only was he the brightest in the program, for which Pirx could fairly easily have forgiven
him -- he could even muster some respect for the man's mathematical genius, ever since the time he had
watched Boerst take on the computer, faltering only when it came to roots of the fourth power -- not
only were his parents sufficiently well-heeled that he didn't have to bother dream-ing about two-crown
pieces lying tucked away in the pocket of his civvies, but he was also a top scorer in gymnastics, a