"John Varley - Red Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

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I ALWAYS THOUGHT the VentureStar looked like a tombstone. When it was standing
on end it was twice as tall as it was wide. It wasnтАЩt very thick. It was round at the top. For
a night launch it was illuminated by dozens of spotlights like an opening night in
Hollywood. It could have been the grave marker for a celebrity from some race of giant
aliens. The stubby wings and tail seemed tacked on.
The VentureStar didnтАЩt spend much time flying, which was just as well, because it flew
about as well as your average skateboard. Sitting on the ground it looked more like a
building than an aircraft or a spaceship.
ThatтАЩs okay. In about thirty seconds it would leave every airplane ever built in a wake
of boiling smoke and fire.
тАЬManny, a Greyhound bus leaves Cocoa Beach every day for Tallahassee. Why donтАЩt
we go watch that some night? We could get a lot closer.тАЭ
That was my girlfriend, Kelly, trying to get my goat. Her point being that VStars left
Canaveral once a day, too. Point taken.
тАЬWho wants to neck at the Greyhound terminal?тАЭ I said.
тАЬHah. The only thing youтАЩve necked with so far is those binocs.тАЭ
[8] I put down my binoculars and thumbed up the brightness of the little flatscreen on
my lap. I got a view looking into one of the windows of the cockpit blister. The flight
crew were on their backs, going through the final items on the prelaunch checklist with
no wasted motion. A woman with curly red hair was sitting in the left seat. I could read
the name sewed on her NASA-blue flight tunic: WESTIN. A younger man with a blond
crewcut sat on the right.
тАЬVStars are noisier, IтАЩll give you that,тАЭ she said. We were sitting side by side on the
tailgate of DakтАЩs truck.
тАЬAinтАЩt you got no poetry in your soul, woman?тАЭ
I used the tip of the screenтАЩs stylus to touch 7, then 5, then ENTER on the tiny flatscreen
keypad. Camera 75 showed a view looking up from the massive concrete abutments that
supported the VStar. Center screen were the long, pinched shapes of the six linear
aerospike rocket engines that stretched across the shipтАЩs wide tail. Wisps of ice-cold
hydrogen and oxygen escaped from the pressure valves and swirled in the warm Florida
night air. Down in the corner were the words тАЬVStar III Delaware,тАЭ a mission number,
and a countdown clock. In less than a minute camera 75 would be toast.
In a corner of the screen the countdown clock went from twenty-five to twenty. I
pressed 5, then 5, then ENTER. A head-on angle of the cockpit crew, slightly fish-eye
from a wide-angle lens. There were no more checks to perform, no more toggles to
switch. They were almost motionless, waiting for the automatic launch sequence.
I pressed 4, then 4 again: Looking down the center aisle of the passenger compartment.
It was built to carry as many as eighteen, but only seven chairs were filled, all of them
toward the front of the module.
I knew those seven faces as well as an earlier generation of space nuts had known the
faces of Al Shepard, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, Gordon
Cooper, Scott Carpenter ... the original Mercury astronauts. None of this seven looked
particularly nervous or excited. The white-knuckle days of space travel were over, or so
everyone said. Mom says theyтАЩll never be over for her generation, who saw Challenger
explode.
I donтАЩt think theyтАЩll ever be completely over for me, either. I mean, [9] I didnтАЩt expect
the ship to blow up or anything, but was I the only guy on the planet who thought this
VStar launch was just a little out of the ordinary? Was I the only one who noticed the