"John D. MacDonald - Flaw" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

You see, I shared JohnnyтАЩs dreams.

And now I know that those dreams are no longer possible. I wonder if
he learned how impossible they were in the few seconds before his flaming
death.

There have always been people like Johnny and me. For a thousand
years mankind has looked at the stars and thought of reaching them. The
stars were to be the new frontier, the new worlds on which mankind could
expand and find the full promise of the human soul.

I never thought much about it until I met Johnny. Five years ago. My
name is Carol Adlar. At that time I was a government clerk working in the
offices at the rocket station in Arizona. It was 1959. The year before the
atomic drive was perfected.

Johnny Pritchard. I figured him out, I thought. A good-looking boy with
dark hair and a careless grin and a swagger. ThatтАЩs all I saw in the
beginning. The hot sun blazed down on the rocks and the evenings were
cool and clear.

There were a lot of boys like Johnny at the rocket stationтАФ
transferred from Air Corps work. Volunteers. You couldnтАЩt order a man off
the surface of the earth in a rocket.

The heart is ever cautious. Johnny Pritchard began to hang around
my desk, a warm look in his eyes. I was as cool as I could be. You donтАЩt
give your heart to a man who soars up at the tip of a comet plume. But I did.

I told myself that I would go out with him one evening and I would be
so cool to him that it would cure him and he would stop bothering me. I
expected him to drive me to the city in his little car. Instead we drove only
five miles from the compound, parked on the brow of a hill looking across
the moon-silvered rock and sand.
 ****

At first I was defensive, until I found that all he wanted to do was talk. He
talked about the stars. He talked in a low voice that was somehow tense
with his visions. I found out that first evening that he wasnтАЩt like the others.
He wasnтАЩt merely one of those young men with perfect coordination and
high courage. Johnny had in him the blood of pioneers. And his frontier was
the stars.

тАЬYou see, Carol,тАЭ he said, тАЬI didnтАЩt know a darn thing about the
upstairs at the time of my transfer. I guess I donтАЩt know much right now.
Less, probably than the youngest astronomer or physicist on the base. But
IтАЩm learning. I spend every minute I can spare studying about it. Carol, IтАЩm
going upstairs some day. Right out into space. And I want to know about it.
I want to know all about it.