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

The fourteen months were like one single revolution of a gigantic
Ferris wheel. You start at the top of the wheel, and through seven months
the wheel carries you slowly down into the darkness and the fear. Then,
after you are at your lowest point, the wheel slowly starts to carry you back
up into the light.
 Somewhere in space I knew that Johnny looked at the small screen
built into the control panel and saw the small bright sphere of earth and
thought of me. I knew all during that fourteen months that he wasnтАЩt dead. If
he had died, no matter how many million miles away from me, I would have
known it in the instant of his dying.

The world forgets quickly. The world had pushed Destiny II off the
surface of consciousness a few months after takeoff. Two months before
the estimated date of return, it began to creep back into the papers and
onto the telescreens of the world.

Work had stopped on Destiny III. The report of the four crewmen
might give a clue to alterations in the interior.

It was odd the way I felt. As though I had been frozen under the
transparent ice of a small lake. Spring was coming and the ice grew thinner.

Each night I went to sleep thinking of Johnny driving down through the
sky toward me at almost incalculable speed. Closer, closer, ever closer.

It was five weeks before the date when they were due to return. I was
asleep in the barracks-like building assigned to the unmarried women of the
base.

The great thud and jar woke me up and through the window I saw the
night sky darkening in the afterglow of some brilliant light.

****

We gathered by the windows and talked for a long time about what it could
have been. It was in all of our minds that it could have been the return of
Destiny II, but we didnтАЩt put it into words, because no safe landing could
have resulted in that deathly thud.

With the lights out again, I tried to sleep. I reached out into the night
sky with my heart, trying to contact Johnny.

And the sky was empty.

I sat up suddenly, my lips numb, my eyes staring. No. It was
imagination. It was illusion. Johnny was still alive. Of course. But when I
composed myself for sleep it was as though dirges were softly playing. In
all the universe there was no living entity called Johnny Pritchard. Nowhere.
 The telescreens were busy the next morning and I saw the shape of