"James White - Lifeboat" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

nice face, too.
"The coach is waiting, sir," she said. Her smile was polite and not at all
impatient, and her eyes were laughing at him.
Mercer nodded and began walking briskly towards the exit, where the passengers
were already climbing the ramp, which led from the cool, blast-proof lounge to
the blistering heat of the surface one hundred feet above. She hurried to keep
pace with him, and Mercer wondered why until he realized suddenly that they
were, after all, fellow workers, servants of the same company, colleagues. The
realization made it possible for him to untie his suddenly knotted tongue.
"I'm sorry if I appeared rude back there," he said, trying hard to keep his
eyes on a level with her face, "but it seems to me that, to anyone leaving
Earth perhaps never to return, you make a very nice last impression. In fact,
if there was a little more time before take-off it would not take much to
convince me not to leave at all. Or come to think of it, when I get back in
eight months we could meet and maybe-" "What you are thinking would probably
get us both into trouble, with my husband," she broke in, laughing. "This is
your first trip, sir."
It was a statement with not the slightest suggestion of a question mark tacked
onto the end. Trying to hide his irritation. Mercer said, "I didn't think it
showed."
She was silent while they left the lounge and began to mount the flat spiral
ramp leading to the surface. The radiation doors which interrupted the
ascending tunnel every twenty yards had been dogged open, so that the hot,
dusty air from above was already reaching them. When she spoke, the last of
the passengers were out of sight and hearing, hidden by the curve of the
tunnel and their own self-generated wall of sound.
"It shows, sir," she said seriously, "but I'm learning caution in my old age.
You see, I don't seem to be able to give advice without also giving offence,
and so unless I'm asked..."
"I'm asking," said Mercer dryly.
She nodded and went on. "You are the tall, hungry-looking type who suits that
black rig-but you, especially, must be careful how you wear it. That rakish
angle of the hat is wrong for Eurydice, and some of your pocket zips are done
and some half-done-you haven't got that right, either, and at this stage of
the game you shouldn't even try. Even the plays which you've been watching so
carefully on TV never get it right, so don't feel too bad about it.
"This mystique with the zips and caps which veteran spacemen practice," she
went on, "began as sheer sloppiness, no doubt, but now the so-and-sos change
the rules after every trip just to confuse people. But you, sir, are not yet a
veteran, so it is much better that you don't get it at all than get it wrong.
In any case, there are two officers on every ship who do not subscribe to
these little idiosyncrasies of dress. They are the Captain, who is too
important to care about such things, and the other is you, sir, who is
generally considered to be the lowest form of life in the service and who is
not supposed to get ideas above his station.
But you know all this already, I hope."
She was watching him intently, but she relaxed when he smiled and said, "I was
told, but not precisely in those words. The general idea seems to be that
since our passengers have to be physically fit to be allowed to make the trip
in the first place, my medical know-how is not essential, and since I have no