"Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Spirals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

started to fall into the Sun. It fell ninety-three million miles just like a falling safe, except
for that peculiar wiggle when he really got into the sunтАЩs magnetic field. Moonbase is going to do
it again with a probe. They want to know more about that wiggle.
The pilot was a lot more careful getting me home, and now IтАЩm back aboard the Skylailc in
a room near the axis where the heart patients stay; and on my desk is this pile of garbage
from a history professor at Harvard who has absolutely proved that we would have had space
industries and space colonies without Jack Halfey. There are no indispensible men.
In the words of a famous American president: Bullshit! WeтАЩve made all the downers so rich
that they canтАЩt remember what it was like back then.
And it was grim. If we hadnтАЩt got space industries established before 2020 weтАЩd never have
been able to afford them at all. Things were that thin. By 2020 AD. there wouldnтАЩt have been any
resources to invest. TheyтАЩd have all gone into keeping eleven billion downers alive (barely!) and


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anybody who proposed тАЬthrowing money into outer spaceтАЭ would have been lynched.
God knows it was that way when Jack Halfey started.

I first met Jack Halfey at UCLA. He was a grad student in architecture, having got his
engineering physics degree from Cal Tech. HeтАЩd also been involved in a number of construction
jobsтАФamong them Hale ObservatoryтАЩs big orbital telescope while he was still an undergrad at Cal
TechтАФand he was already famous. Everyone knows he was brilliant, and theyтАЩre right, but he had
another secret weapon: he worked his arse off. He had to. Insomnia. Jack couldnтАЩt sleep more than
a couple of hours a night, and to get even that much sleep he had to get laid first.
I know about this because when I met, Jack he was living with my sister. Ruthie told me
that theyтАЩd go to bed, and Jack would sleep a couple of hours, and up heтАЩd be, back at work,
because once he woke up there was no point in lying in bed.
On nights when they couldnтАЩt make Out he fltver went to bed at all, and he was pure hell
to live with the next day.
She also told me he was one mercenary son of a bitch. That doesnтАЩt square with the public
image of Jack Halfey, savior of mankind, but it happens to be true, and he never made much of a
secret of it. He wanted to get rich fast. His ambition was to lie around Rio de JaneiroтАЩs beaches
and sample the local wines and women; and he had his life all mapped out so that heтАЩd be able to
retire before he was forty.
I knew him for a couple of months, then he left UCLA to be a department head in the
construction of the big Tucson arcology. There was a tearful scene with Ruthie: she didnтАЩt fit
into JackтАЩs image for the future, and he wasnтАЩt very gentle about how he told her he was leaving.
He stormed out of her apartment carrying his suitcase while Ruthie and I~ shouted curses at him,
and that was that.
I never expected to see him again.
When I graduated there was this problem: I was a metallurgist, and there were a lot of us.
Metallurgists had been in big demand when I started UCLA, so naturally everybody studied
metallurgy and matCrials science; by the time I graduated it was damned tough getting a job.
The depression didnтАЩt help much either. I graduated right in the middle of it. Runaway
inflation, research chopped to the bone, environmentalists and Only One Earthers and Friends of
Man and the Earth and other such yo-yoтАЩs on the rise; in those days there was a new energy crisis
every couple of years, and when I got my sheepskin we were in the middle of. I think, number 6.
Industry was laying off, not hiring.