"Pearson, Martin - So You Want To Be A Space Flier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pearson Martin)

SO YOU WANT TO BE A SPACE-FLIER?
by Martin Pearson




SO YOU WANT to be a space-flier?
My friend, if you only knew what you are asking for. Life in a space ship is no
joke. Nor is it a thrilling adventure. You're all alone there; you get tired of
reading. You can't play cards and the like because, first, there's no one with
whom to play and, second, because the cards won't stay put. There's nothing to
see; space scenery is sheer monotony. The whole ship smells; cooking's a rotten,
messy job and the after effects are still more so.
Picture me after I'm about ten days out from Mars, approaching Earth. I still
have five more days to go, am getting into the last sick-and-tired stage of
space-flying. I've read everything in the microfilm box on the way out; for the
return trip there's only a few rolls I picked up at Marsport, books written
about a hundred years ago, dealing with some writer's idea of space-flying and
life on Mars. Naturally, the author knew nothing of his subject.
Oh, those stories about giant spaceships, big crews, Martian princesses, space
pirates, grotesque and malignant space-beings! The first day, they were amusing;
the second day funny, the third day just silly, and the fourth day, I thought
them specimens of sheer stupidity. By the tenth day, I was positive that those
writers were lunatics who had barely managed to keep from being put away.
Picture my ship in contrast to the nonsense this maniac dished out a century
ago. There weren't any fine gravity plates so that I could walk a deck with as
much ease as if I were at home on Earth. Gravity plates could be done, but
they'd raise havoc with drive belts, make your course impossible to figure,
attract thousands of meteors, which would turn the ship into a sieve before you
were two hours out. So, there weren't any fancy gravity plates.
You know what it feels like? It feels like fading. Like falling down an endless
and bottomless elevator shaft out of which all the air has been pumped. Your
organs are drifting around; you have difficulty in swallowing, and every once in
awhile you forget yourself and think you are really falling, flail out in all
directions with consequent damage. Then, when you sleep--oh, when you sleep! You
dream of falling. From the second you close your eyes to the instant you wake
up, yelling your head off, you're falling off a cliff, about to be splattered
all over the ground. Sleeping in space is sheer hell.
Not that it's much better when you're awake. There's still no gravity, remember.
That means, I floated around in mid-air looking like a goldfish in a bowl. Only
not as comfortable; the goldfish is in its element. I had no right-side up, no
top or bottom. Not being built for that sort of thing (for, like it or not,
humans are constructed for planets, not free space) even an experienced spacer
like myself keeps bumping his head, shins, shoulders, funny bone, or stomach
into things--not to mention things bumping into him. Yeah, there's no weight,
true: but things still have their mass and that spells sheer misery. You have
Earth muscles, adapted to Earth conditions; no matter how much space-training
you have had, you can't go easy all the time. All that training can do for you
is give you an idea what you'll be up against. A spaceman won't run into one
tenth the grief that an untrained person would, but the thing is still hellish.