"Robert F. Young - Passage to Gomorrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

He shinnied furiously for several seconds, then paused again. He was tired, and his chest hurt. His
shins smarted from repeated scraping against the trunk.
He looked up at the fork again. It was quite close now, Perhaps close enough. He reached up with
one arm, man-aged to wrap it around the larger of the two limbs. After a moment he reinforced his hold
with his other arm. He started to pull his body up-ward, shinnying with his legs. For a while he thought he
was going to make it, then his left arm cramped and his right, unable to support his weight, began to slip.
He screamed as he started to fall, but in his desperation he managed to transfer his good arm back to
the trunk and keep his legs in position, so that he didn't really fall, he slid, instead, down the trunk to the
limb he had left a short time before. He glimpsed the ground, far below, and the height caught up to him
once and for all, and he locked his body around the limb and clung there, whimpering.
Presently, he saw one of the other boys start climbing the tree to bring him down, and he heard his
new nickname being bandied about on the meadowтАФ
"Eberhardt, Eberhardt, Eberhardt Cross!"

"Gee, Dad, are you going on another trip?"
"Sure thing," her father said, looking up from his open suitcase.
"ButтАФbut you just got back."
His face looked funny, the way it always did after he and mother had been mouth-fight-ingтАФas
though he wanted it to look one way and his mus-cles wanted it to look a totally different way, and he
had had to settle for an expression halfway in-between. "Sorry, Berenice, have to go again."
"ButтАФ"
"Now, don't cry, darling. Please don't cry."
But she cried anyway, she had to. What else could you do when you'd planned all spring for the
halcyon summer days and the treks through the woods, the fishing and the campsite, the little fire burn-ing
brightly and your father sitting beside you in the se-rene summer night?
He was on his knees and he was holding her close, and now his face made her think of one of those
balloons with faces painted on them that you blew up and twisted into different shapes, only not quite the
same, because bal-loons couldn't cryтАФ
"I'll write you, darling. Be a good girl now, and mind your mother."

The other boys were stand-ing on the corner, waiting for him to pass. He gripped his galactic
geography book tight-ly and he held his mouth firm, and he made his legs behave as though he wanted
them to keep right on walking, as though the thought of flight was remote from his thoughts. . "Here
comes Eberhardt Cross!"
"Hi, Eberhardt!"
"Climb any trees lately, Eberhardt?"
"Eberhardt, Eberhardt, Eberhardt Cross!"
He kept right on walking. If he stopped it would be worse. They wouldn't settle for mere words
thenтАФand there were five of them, and he was only one, and not much of a one at that.
But he thought: I'll show them. I'll show them if it takes me the rest of my life!
"Come in," her mother said, and the tall, handsome man stepped out of the summer night and into the
scented living room. "I'm so glad; you could drop by ... Run out and play now, Berenice, like a good little
girl. You've been cooped up in the house all day. . . ."

Miss Tenthyear's android eyes beamed brightly as she assumed her lecture-posture by the desk.
"Our final subject for today, class," she said, "will be the story of Captain Alexander Eberhardt.
"Your mothers and fathers have probably mentioned his name many times, and they've probably told
you about how he piloted the first spaceship to the moon, had a nervous breakdown after he crashed
there, and babbled for days over the world-wide radio hook-up, begging for some-one, anyone, to save
him. All of this is true, and Captain Eberhardt, in the eyes of the public, has never been consid-ered a