"Dead Center" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

smooth, and the fingers were stronger, but so strong it hurt sometimes.
They took him up in an elevator, and showed him all around the inside of the
rocket, where Daddy would sit, and where all the food was stored, for emergency,
they said, and the radio and everything. Then it was time to say goodbye.
Daddy was laughing at first, and Toby tried to laugh, too, but he didn't really
want Daddy to go away. Daddy kissed him, and he felt like crying because it was
scratchy against Daddy's cheek, and the strong fingers were hurting him now.
Then Daddy stopped laughing and looked at him very seriously. "You take care of
your mother, now," Daddy told him. "You're a big boy this time."
"Okay," Toby said. Last time Daddy went away in a rocket, he was not-quite-four,
and they teased him with the poem in the book that said, James James Morrison
Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, Took great care of his mother, though he was
only three. . . . So Toby didn't much like Daddy saying that now, because he
knew they didn't really mean it.
"Okay," he said, and then because he was angry, he said, "Only she's supposed to
take care of me, isn't she?"
Daddy and Mommy both laughed, and so did the two men who were standing there
waiting for Daddy to get done saying goodbye to him. He wriggled, and Daddy put
him down.
"I'll bring you a piece of the moon, son," Daddy said, and Toby said, "All
right, fine." He reached for his mother's hand, but he found himself hanging
onto Grandma instead, because Mammy and Daddy were kissing each other, and both
of them had forgotten all about him.
He thought they were never going to get done kissing.

Ruth Kruger stood in the glass control booth with her son on one side of her,
and Gordon Kimberly breathing heavily on the other side. Something's wrong, she
thought, this time something's wrong. And then, swiftly, I mustn't think that
way!
Jealous? she taunted herself. Do you want something to be wrong, just because
this one isn't all yours, because Argent did some of it?
But if anything is wrong, she prayed, let it be now, right away, so he can't go.
If anything's wrong let it be in the firing gear or the ... what? Even now, it
was too late. The beast was too big and too delicate and too precise. If
something went wrong, even now, it was too late. It was . . .
You didn't finish that thought. Not if you were Ruth Kruger, and your husband
was Jock Kruger, and nobody knew but the two of you how much of the courage that
had gone twice round the moon, and was about to land on it, was yours. When a
man knows his wife's faith is unshakeable, he can't help coming back. (But:
"Baby! You're not scared, are you?")
Twice around the moon, and they called him Jumping Jock. There was never a doubt
in anyone's mind who'd pilot the KIM-5, the bulky beautiful beast out there
today. Kruger and Kimberly, O'Heyer and Stein. It was a combo.
It won every time. Every time. Nothing to doubt. No room for doubt.
"Minus five . . ." someone said into a mike, and there was perfect quiet all
around. "Four . . . three ...
(But he held me too tight, and he laughed too loud.)
(Only because he thought I was scared, she answered herself.)
". . . Mar—"
You didn't even hear the whole word, because the thunder-drumming roar of the