"Robert F. Young - The Summer of the Fallen Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Robert Young's new story is about Earth's first starship and the man
who builds it, a man whose dream began during one summer when he
was 10 . . .

The Summer of the Fallen Star
BY
ROBERT F. YOUNG

The fallen star had lain in a clearing in the woods behind his father's farm, not far from the lip of the
ravine into which it was destined to be bulldozed and buried. It was partially covered with moss, and at
first glance appeared to be nothing more than a big egg-shaped boulder. Only when you looked close
could you see the fissures and the charred areas that provided prima fade evidence of its fiery passage
through the atmosphere.
A true meteor, of course, would have created a crater and wiped out part of the woods, but the kids
who lived in the vicinity weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, Larkin least of all.
Even in those days he'd been a loner, and almost always, when he visited the clearing where the fallen
star lay, he did so alone. The summer when he was 10 was when he visited it the most often. At the time,
he'd been blissfully unaware that the star was doomedтАФthat the following spring the woods would be
cleared to make room for a housing development.
He would sit there in the warm sun on long summer afternoons and gaze at the star and make up
stories about it. In one of the stories it was an alien spaceshipтАФa spaceship that had malfunctioned while
in the vicinity of the solar system and made a forced landing on Earth. A spaceship whose pilot had
perished during passage through the atmosphere, or who, unable to get out of the ship because of injuries
suffered during the forced landing, had died either from starvation or from a lack of oxygen.
In a sense, the fallen star had shaped Larkin's life.

***

"Oh, you're Mr. Larkin. The Mr. Larkin. Sorry I didn't recognize you, sir. Go right on through."
"Thanks," Larkin said, zipping the front of his nylon jacket back over the ID card clipped to his shirt
pocket.
"I can understand why you'd want to make a last-minute inspection," the guard at the launch-pad gate
went on. "If she was my shipтАФif I'd built her, that is, like you didтАФI'd want to make sure she was okay
too. Incidentally, sir, do you have any idea why they're holdingтАФwhy countdown was stopped and
almost everybody was sent home?"
"None whatsoever," Larkin lied.
The Brunhilde-Valkyrie launch-complex (Scandinavian mythology had recently become the rage in
space circles) was reminiscent of the Apollo-Saturn complex (Launch Complex 39), now in mothballs.
The Launch Control Center, a long rectangular structure, stood next to the giant Vertical Assembly
Building and, in juxtaposition to it, appeared like a medium-sized building block yet to be set in place.
The pad itself (unlike Launch Complex 39, there was only one) was linked to the VAB by a wide,
three-mile-long crawlerway, down which, three days ago, the mobile launcher had carried the Valkyrie
launch vehicle and the Brunhilde 2 spacecraft.
Larkin began walking toward the massive support-pedestal on which the mobile launch and the
Brunhilde 2-Valkyrie had been positioned. Driving down the new highway that ran the length of the
crawlerway and gave onto the parking area, he had become increasingly aware of the towering
spaceship. Now, as he walked through the lake of light created by the floodlights, his awareness
intensified. The ship, with its slender escape tower affixed to the nose of the command module, seemed
to touch the hem of Heaven. Beside it, taller yet, the launch-and service-tower, even with all of its
extensions withdrawn save for the walkway that gave access to the hatch, brought to mind the great ash