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

The maneuver: escape orbit at sixty degrees twenty-four minutes north latitude, one hundred fifteen
degrees three minutes eleven seconds east longitude. Initial acceleration: 2.2g. Terminal acceleration:
zero. Without losing radio contact, escort both JO-2 ships in tri-formation to Moon, commence lunar
insertion for temporary equatorial orbit as per LUNA PATHFINDER, verify orbital injection of both
piloted ships, then escape orbit at acceleration and course of your own discretion, and return to
stationary orbit in the radius of satellite PAL. There await further instructions."
There were rumors that the conventional cribsheet was about to be replaced by an electronic
pony, a microbrain the size of a cherry pit that could be inserted in the ear, or under the tongue, and be
programmed to supply whatever informa-tion was needed at the moment. But Pirx was skeptical,
reasoning -- not without a certain logic -- that such an inven-tion would nullify the need for any cadets.
For the time being, though, there weren't any, and so he had little choice but to give a word-for-word
recap of the entire mission -- and repeat it he did, committing only one error in the process, but that being
a fairly serious one: he confused the minutes and seconds of time with the seconds and minutes of latitude
and longitude. He waited for the next round, sweating buckets in his antiperspiration suit, underneath the
thick coverall of his space suit. He was asked to give another recap, which he did, though so far not a
single word of what he said had made the slightest impression on him. His only thought at the moment
was: Wow! They're really giving me the third degree!
Clutching the pony in his left hand, he handed over his navigation book with the other. Making
the cadets give an oral recitation of the mission was a deliberate hoax, since they always got it in writing,
anyhow, complete with the basic diagrams and charts. The CO slipped the flight envelope into the little
pocket lining the inside cover, and returned the book to him.
"Pilot Pirx, are you ready for blast-off?"
"Ready!" Pirx replied. Right now he was conscious of only one desire: to be in the control cabin.
He dreamed of the moment when he could unzip his space suit, or at least the neck ring.
The CO stepped back.
"Board your rocket!" he bellowed in a magnificent voice, a voice that rose above the muffled roar
of the cavernous hangar like a cathedral bell.
Pirx did an about-face, grabbed the red pennon, bumped against the railing but regained his
balance in the nick of time, and marched down the narrow gangway like a zombie. He was not halfway
across when Boerst -- looking for all the world like a soccer ball from the back -- had already boarded
his rocket ship.
He stuck his legs inside, braced himself against the metal housing, and scooted down the flexible
chute without so much as touching the ladder rungs -- "Rungs are only for the goners," was one of
Bullpen's pet sayings -- and proceeded to "button up" the cabin. They had practiced it a hundred, even a
thousand times, on mock-ups and on a real manhatch dismantled from a rocket and mounted in the
training hangar. It was enough to make a man giddy: a half-turn of the left crank, a half-turn of the right
one, gasket control, another half-turn of both cranks, clamp, airtight pressure control, inside manhole
plate, meteor deflector shield, trans-fer from air lock to cabin, pressure valve, first one crank, then the
other, and last of all the crossbar -- whew!
It crossed his mind that, while he was still busy turning the manhole cover, Boerst was probably
already settled in his glass cocoon. But then, he told himself, what was the rush? The lift-offs were always
staggered at six-minute intervals to avoid a simultaneous launch. Even so, he was anxious to get behind
the controls and hook up the radiophone -- if only to eavesdrop on Boerst's commands. He was curious
to know what Boerst's mission was.
The interior lights automatically went on the moment he closed the outside hatch. After sealing off
the cabin, he climbed a small flight of steps padded with a rough but pliant material, before reaching the
pilot's seat.
Now why in hell's name did they have to squeeze the pilot into a glass blister three meters in
diameter when these one-man rockets were cramped enough as it was? wondered Pirx. The blister,
though transparent, was made not of glass, of course, but of some Plexiglas material having roughly the