"James Tiptree Jr. - Houston, Houston Do You Read" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

He hugs her shoulders, flings out his arm and hugs Andy too. They float upward
in his grasp, Judy grinning excitedly, almost pretty.

"Let's get some more of that good stuff." Bud propels them both toward the
serving rack which is decorated for the occasion with sprays of greens and
small real daisies.

"Happy New Year! Hey, Happy New Year, y'all!"

Faces turn, more smiles. Genuine smiles, Lorimer thinks, maybe they really
like their new years. He feels he has infinite time to examine every event,
the implications evolving in crystal facets. I'm an echo chamber. Enjoyable,
to be the observer. But others are observing too. They've started something
here. Do they realize? So vulnerable, three of us, five of them in this
fragile ship. They don't know. A dread unconnected to action lurks behind his
mind.

"By god we made it," Bud laughs. "You space chickies, I have to give it to
you. I commend you, by god I say it. We wouldn't be here, wherever we are.
Know what, I jus' might decide to stay in the service after all. Think they
have room for old Bud in your space program, sweetie?"

"Knock that off, Bud," Dave says quietly from the far wall. "I don't want to
hear us use the name of the Creator like that." The full chestnut beard gives
him a patriarchal gravity. Dave is forty-six, a decade older than Bud and
Lorimer. Veteran of six successful missions.

"Oh my apologies, Major Dave old buddy." Bud chuckles intimately to the girl.
"Our commanding ossifer. Stupendous guy. Hey, Doc!" he calls. "How's your
attitude? You making out dinko?"

"Cheers," Lorimer hears his voice reply, the complex stratum of his feelings
about Bud rising like a kraken in the moonlight of his mind. The submerged
silent thing he has about them all, all the Buds and Daves and big,
indomitable, cheerful, able, disciplined, slow-minded mesomorphs he has cast
his life with. Meso-ectos, he corrected himself; astronauts aren't
muscleheads. They like him, he has been careful about that. Liked him well
enough to get him on Sunbird, to make him the official scientist on the first
circumsolar mission. That little Doc Lorimer, he's cool, he's on the team. No
shit from Lorimer, not like those other scientific assholes. He does the bit
well with his small neat build and his deadpan remarks. And the years of
turning out for the bowling, the volleyball, the tennis, the skeet, the
skiiing that broke his ankle, the touch football that broke his collarbone.
Watch that Doc, he's a sneaky one. And the big men banging him on the back,
accepting him. Their token scientist . . . The trouble is, he isn't any kind
of scientist any more. Living off his postdoctoral plasma work, a lucky hit.
He hasn't really been into the math for years, he isn't up to it now. Too many
other interests, too much time spent explaining elementary stuff. I'm a
half-jock, he thinks. A foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier and I'd be