"Baxter, Stephen - Manifold 03 - Origin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

Dig is on the ground, her hands tucked between her legs. She is curled up. Loud
is gone. Fire's legs walk.

Fire stops.

Dig is far. The fire is far. He is in a mouth of darkness. Eyes watch him.

He makes his legs walk him back to the fire.

Sing is lying on a bower. He has forgotten he made the bower. Her eyes watch
him. Her arm lifts.

He kneels. His face rests on her chest. The bower rustles. Sing gasps.

Her hand runs over his belly. Her hand finds his member. It is painfully
swollen. Her hand closes around it. He shudders.

She sings.

He sleeps.



Emma Stoney:

If this really was the close of Malenfant's career at NASA, Emma thought, it
could be a good thing.

She wasn't the type of foolish ground-bound spouse who palpitated every moment
Malenfant was on orbit (although she hadn't been able to calm her stomach during
those searing moments of launch, as the Shuttle passed through one of NASA's
'non-survivable windows' after another...). No, the sacrifices she had made went
broader and deeper than that.

It had started as far back as the moment when, as a new arrival at the Naval
Academy, he had broken his hometown girl's seventeen-year-old heart with a
letter saying that he thought they should break off their relationship. Now he
was at Annapolis, he had written, he wanted to devote himself 'like a monk' to
his studies. Well, that had lasted all of six months before he had started to
pursue her again, with letters and calls, trying to win her back.

That letter had, in retrospect, set the course of their lives for three decades.
But maybe that course was now coming to an end.

'You know,' she said dreamily, 'maybe if it is ending, it's fitting it should be
like this. In the air, I mean. Do you remember that flight to San Francisco? You
had just got accepted by the Astronaut Office...'

It had been Malenfant's third time of trying to join the astronaut corps, after