"Robert A. Heinlein - Methuselahs Children" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

She nodded thoughtfully. „I think you are right.“
„Sure I’m right. It takes a hundred years or so to realize just how good life is.“
He stood up and stretched. „But right now this growing boy could use some
sleep.“
„Me, too.“
Mary’s flat was on the top floor, with a sky view. When she had come back to
the lounge she had cut the inside lighting and let the ceiling shutters fold
back; they had been sitting, save for an invisible sheet of plastic, under the
stars. As Lazarus raised his head in stretching, his eye had rested on his
favorite constellation. „Odd,“ he commented. „Orion seems to have added a
fourth star to his belt.“
She looked up. „That must be the big ship for the Second Centauri
Expedition. See if you can see it move.“
„Couldn’t tell without instruments.“
„I suppose not,“ she agreed. „Clever of them to build it out in space, isn’t
it?“
„No other way to do it. It’s too big to assemble on Earth. I can doss down
right here, Mary. Or do you have a spare room?“
„Your room is the second door on the right. Shout if you can’t find everything
you need.“ She put her face up and kissed him goodnight, a quick peck.
„’Night.“
Lazarus followed her and went into his own room.
Mary Sperling woke at her usual hour the next day. She got up quietly to
keep from waking Lazarus, ducked into her ‚fresher, showered and
massaged, swallowed a grain of sleep surrogate to make up for the short
night, followed it almost as quickly with all the breakfast she permitted her
waistline, then punched for the calls she had not bothered to take the night
before. The phone played back several calls which she promptly forgot, then
she recognized the voice of Bork Vanning. „’Hello,’“ the instrument said.
„’Mary, this is Bork, calling at twenty-one o’clock. I’ll be by at ten o’clock
tomorrow morning, for a dip in the lake and lunch somewhere. Unless I hear
from you it’s a date. ‚Bye, my dear. Service.’“
„Service,“ she repeated automatically. Drat the man! Couldn’t he take no for
an answer? Mary Sperling, you’re slipping!-a quarter your age and yet you
can’t seem to handle him. Call him and leave word that-no, too late; he’d be
here any minute. Bother!


Chapter 2

WHEN LAZARUS went to bed he stepped out of his kilt and chucked it
toward a wardrobe which snagged it, shook it out, and hung it up neatly.
„Nice catch,“ he commented, then glanced down at his hairy thighs and
smiled wryly; the kilt had concealed a blaster strapped to one thigh, a knife to
the other. He was aware of the present gentle custom against personal
weapons, but he felt naked without them. Such customs were nonsense
anyhow, foolishment from old women-there was no such thing as a
„dangerous weapon,“ there were only dangerous men.
When he came out of the ‚fresher, he put his weapons where he could reach
them before sprawling in sleep.