"Allen Steele - Orbital Decay" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

Rescued in the nick of time, la. Sorry, that stuff only happens in
science fiction stories. I know damn well that the guys back at the
base, inert bastards that they are, won't even think about looking for
me until I'm several hours overdue. These two-week days tend to
distort time like that.

I'll be long dead by the time someone peers over his Marvel comic book
and says, ''Hey, what happened to Sam?" It'll be another hour before
someone else says, "Hey, y'know, I think Sam's overdue from his trip
out." And it'll be another hour after that before someone finally says
"Well, gee whiz, maybe we ought to take another track out and go find
ol' Sam; he might be in trouble or something."

You sons of bitches. I'm gonna get you for this.

At least there's the consolation, the posthumous booby prize, that
someone may eventually transcribe these taped recollections and publish
them as an article about the man who made the greatest discovery.

After all these years, after all those reject slips, I'll finally get
something of mine in print. The last words of a failed science fiction
writer; maybe it'll even get in Analog or Omni, one of the mags that
turned down all the other stuff I wrote. It may even spur some
publisher to print Ragnarok Night, the SF novel that no one would touch
while I was alive.

I can always daydream, can't I?

Yeah, life is just full of them crazy little ironies. Death is too, I
suppose.

So, to pass the time until my oxygen or suit batteries peter out, I'll
tell you a story, you who will someday separate this tape from my suit
recorder. A spaceman's memoirs, if you will. How Samuel K. Sloane,
who got a job with Skycorp so he could go to space to get authentic
background for his science fiction novel, ended up making the Great
Discovery.

Of course, that isn't all there is to it. There was also the stuff

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that happened on Skycan and Vulcan, like Doc Felapolous and his cats or
the run-in between Virgin Bruce and Cap'n Wallace, and Jack Hamilton
and orbital decadence, and the day we messed with the plans of the
National Security Agency and stuck a banana in the Big Ear, so to
speak. That all came first . . . which of course means that I had
best start at the beginning, like you do with all good stories.