"Walter M. Miller - The Hoofer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and
began jerking franti-cally at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if
kept that up. He stopped and cov-ered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light we
on in the house, and when it went off again, the in-fant's cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly. "I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky and fight-ing the relentless concrete that clutch
his feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. The stirring-about woke t
baby again, and once more the infant's wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's fault. No fathers allowed
space, they said, but it wasn't their fault either. They were right, and he had only himself to blam
The kid was an accident, but that didn't change anything. Not a thing in the world. It re-mained
tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a family, but what was a man going to do? Take a skinnin
knife, boy, and make yourself a eunuch. But that was no good either. They needed bulls out the
in the pit, not steers. And when a man came down from a year's hitch, what was he going to do
Live in a lonely shack and read books for kicks? Because you were a man, you sought out
woman. And because she was a woman, she got a kid, and that was the end of it. It was nobody
fault, nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars low in the southwest. They were running out there now, an
next year he would have been on the long long run ...
But there was no use thinking about it. Next year and the years after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing, staring out into B
Bottomless while his son's cry came from the house and the Hauptman men-folk came wadin
through the tall grass in search of someone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and
wouldn't ever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him.