"Anderson, Poul - Operation Luna" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Foundation grant to concentrate on his lunar studies. Soon our kids also
were.

Her inner steeliness came back to Ginny. "And I won't pry," she
finished. "He'll tell me what and when he chooses."

"Maybe a love affair isn't going so well," I suggested.

"At his age?"

"Hell, I don't expect to be a dodderer when I get there. You'd better
keep me satisfied, woman."

She grinned. "Same to you, man." Seriously again: "Okay, I've been
assuming it's a personal matter. After all, it doesn't often show;
mostly he's his usual self. Simply short bouts of moodiness and--and
maybe, now, a touch of flu."

"Still, a pity."

"Yes, but this isn't the big event." Merely the first piloted test of
the type of vessel meant to land the first humans on the moon. Seven
orbits around Earth, if everything went well, mainly to try out the
control spells and life-support systems. Will would have plenty more
launches to behold, each different, more venturesome, inching toward
yonder globe and the mysteries on it that he himself had revealed.

I didn't remark on how unnecessarily complicated and expensive a way to
go I thought this was. Ginny had heard her fill of me on that subject.
Besides, she'd repeatedly given the little Operation Luna Company help
more valuable than it could have paid for.

And meanwhile, maybe forever, NASA's was the only game in town.

And-- We came out onto open ground. Ahead of us a viewing stand raised
white bleachers into black night. Beyond stretched half a mile of lava.
Short paved roads cut through that jumble, converging on a central spot.
There loomed the beast, waiting to leap, ablaze with the light upon it,
a magnificence that my humble dream could never match.

We'd had a few qualms about making for the journalistic observation
area.

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2
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Employees not on duty generally did so, because the site was better than
that given the VIPs. We, though, had been famous ourselves for a while,