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

None of those names was too reassuring to Emma. 'Malenfant, are you sure we
should get caught up in that? We don't want some trigger-happy Tanzanian flyboy
to mistake us for Eetie.'

He barked laughter. 'Come on, Emma. You're showing your prejudice. We trained
half those guys and sold the planes to the other half. And they're only
spotters. Bill is informing them we're coming. There's no threat. And, who
knows? Maybe we'll get to be involved in first contact.'

Under his veneer of cynicism she sensed an edge of genuine excitement. From out
of the blue, here was another adventure for Reid Malenfant, hero astronaut.
Another adventure that had nothing to do with her.

I was wrong, she thought. I'm never going to get him back, no matter what
happens at NASA. But then I never had him anyhow.

Losing sympathy for him, she snapped, 'You really told Joe Bridges to shove his
job?'

'Sweetest moment of my life.'

'Oh, Malenfant. Don't you know how it works yet? If you took your punishment, if
you sweated out your time, you'd be back in rotation for the next assignment, or
the one after that.'

'Bullshit.'

'It's the way of the world. I've had to go through it, in my own way. Everybody
has. Everybody who wants to get on in the real world, with real people, anyhow.
Everybody but you, the great hero.'

'You sound like you're writing my appraisal,' he said, a little ruefully.
'Anyhow, ass-kissing wouldn't have helped. It was the Russians, that fucking
Grand Medical Commission of theirs.'

'The Russians scrubbed you?'

'It was when I was in Star City.'

Star City, the Russian military base thirty miles outside Moscow that served as
the cosmonauts' training centre.

'Malenfant, you got back from there a month ago. You never thought to tell me
about it?'

Through two layers of Plexiglas, she could see him shrug. 'I was appealing the
decision. I didn't see the point of troubling you. Hell, Emma, I thought I would
win. I knew I would. I thought they couldn't scrub me.'