"Robert A. Heinlein - A tenderfoot in space (original version)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

today. If forty percent are revived, it’s a good shipment. I do my best.”
Charlie looked grey. The surgeon looked at Mr. Vaughn, back at the
boy. “Son, I know a man who’s looking for a dog for his kids. Say the
word and you won’t have to worry about whether this pooch’s system
will recover from a shock it was never intended to take.”
Mr. Vaughn said, “Well, son?”
Charlie stood mute, in an agony of indecision. At last Mr. Vaughn
said-sharply, “Chuck, we’ve got just twenty minutes before we must
check in with Emigration. Well? What’s your answer?”
Charlie did not seem to hear. Timidly. he put out one hand, barely
touched the still form with the staring, unseeing eyes. Then he


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snatched his hand back and squeaked, “No! We’re going to Venus—
both of us!”— turned and ran out of the room.
The veterinary spread his hands helplessly. “I tried.”
“I know you - did, Doctor,” Mr. Vaughn answered gravely. “Thank
you.”
The Vaughns took the usual emigrant routing: winged shuttle rocket
to the inner satellite station, ugly wingless ferry rocket to the outer
station, transshipment there to the great globular cargo liner
Hesperus. The jumps and changes took two days; they stayed in the
deepspace ship for twenty-one tedious weeks, falling in half-elliptical
orbit from Earth down to Venus. The time was fixed, an inescapable
consequence of the law of gravity and the sizes and shapes of the
two planetary orbits.
At first Charlie was terribly excited. The terrific highgravity boost to
break away from Earth’s mighty grasp was as much of a shocker as
he had hoped; six gravities is shocking, even to those used to it.
When the shuttle rocket went into free fall a few minutes later, utter
weightlessness was as distressing, confusing—and exciting—as he
had hoped. It was so upsetting that he would have lost his lunch had
he not been injected with anti-nausea drug.
Earth, seen from space, looked as it had looked in color-stereo
pictures, but he found that the real thing is as vastly more satisfying
as a hamburger.is better than a picture of one. In the outer satellite
station, someone pointed out to him the famous Captain Nordhoff,
just back from Pluto. Charlie recognized those stern, lined
features, familiar from TV and news pictures, and realized with odd
surprise that the hero was a man, like everyone else. He decided to
be a spaceman and famous explorer himself.
S. S. Hesperus was a disappointment. It “blasted” away from the
outer station with a gentle shove, onetenth gravity, instead of the
soul-satisfying, bonegrinding, ear-shattering blast with which the
shuttle had left Earth. Also, despite its enormous size, it was terribly
crowded. After the Captain had his ship in orbit to intercept Venus
five months later, he- placed spin on his ship to give his passengers
artificial weight—which took from Charlie the pleasant neW feeling of
weightlessness which he had come to enjoy.