"Robert A. Heinlein - Space Family Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Dad, you were on the Board of Education’

10
 ‘I was not; I was mayor.’
‘Which made you a member ex-officio - Hazel told us.’
Mr Stone glanced at his mother; she was looking elsewhere. He went on,
‘Tech is a good school, of its sort’ but we don’t pretend to offer everything at
Tech. After all, the Moon is still an outpost, a frontier -‘
‘But you said’ Pollux interrupted, ‘in your retiring speech as mayor, that Luna
City was the Athens of the future and the hope of the new age.’
‘Poetic license. Tech is still not Harvard. Don’t you boys want to see the
world’s great works of art? Don’t you want to study the world’s great
literature?’
‘We’ve read lvanhoe,’ said Castor.
‘And we don’t want to read The Mill on the Floss,’ added Pollux.
‘We prefer your stuff.’
‘My stuff? My stuff isn’t literature. It’s more of an animated comic strip.’
‘We like it’ Castor said firmly.
His father took a deep breath. ‘Thank you. Which reminds me that I still have
a full episode to sweat out tonight, so I will cut this discussion short. In the
first place you can’t touch the money without my thumbprint - from now on I
am going to wear gloves. In the second place both of you are too young for
an unlimited license.’
‘You could get us a waiver for out-system. When we got back we’d probahly
be old enough for unlimited.’
‘You’re too young!’
Castor said, ‘Why, Dad, not half an hour ago you accepted a gimmick from
me in which you were going to have an eleven-year-old kid driving a ship.’
‘I’ll raise his age!’
‘It’ll ruin your gimmick.’
‘Confound it! That’s just fiction - and poor fiction at that It’s hokum, dreamed
up to sell merchandise.’ He suddenly looked suspiciously at his son. ‘Cas,
you planted that gimmick on me. Just to give yourself an argument in favor of
this hair-brained scheme - didn’t you?’
Castor looked pious. ‘Why, Father, how could you think such a thing?’
‘Don’t Father me! I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.’
‘Anybody can,’ Grandmother Hazel commented. ‘The Hawk class is a purely
commercial type while the Hanshaw runabout is a sport job. Come to think
about it, boys, a Hanshaw might be better than a Douglas. I like its fractional
controls and -‘



11
‘Hazel!’ ‘napped her. son. ‘Quit encouraging the boys. And quit showing off.
You’re not the only engineer in the family.’
‘I’m the only good one,’ she answered smugly.
‘Oh, yes? Nobody ever complained about my work.’
‘Then why did you quit?’
‘You know why. Fiddle with finicky figures for months on end - and what have