"Alexei Panshin - Rite Of Passage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Panshin Alexei)

but I was still smoldering.
“I’m not ready to go yet,” I said. “I have a fresh kick coming.”
“What for?” Venie demanded. “It’s not my fault that you ran into me.”
If it was my own fault that I’d wound up on the ground, I had no reason for
complaint. If it was Venie’s fault, then I had a shot at the goal coming on a major
penalty. That’s soccer. I guess Venie thought if she denied doing anything long
enough and loudly enough somebody would take her seriously.
Mary Carpentier, my best friend, spoke up then. “Oh, come off it, Venie,” she
said. “We all saw what happened. Let Mia take her shot so she can go home.”
After some fruitless argument on Venie’s part, everybody agreed I had a free kick
coming. I set the ball on the X-mark on the ground in front of the goal.
The goalie was Mrs. Farmer’s son, Peter, who was younger than I and slow
enough to be put in the goal. He poised himself with his hands on his knees and
waited. The goal is eight feet high and twenty-four feet wide, and the ball is set down
thirty-six feet away. The goalie has a big area to cover but in two quick steps he can
reach any ball aimed at the goal. It takes a good shot to get by him.
Both teams stood behind and watched as I backed off a step or two from the
ball. After a moment I ran, faked a kick with my good left foot, and put a weak
right-footed kick dribbling just past the goalie’s outstretched fingers into the corner
of the nets. Then I left.
I dodged into the outside corridor and made straight for my shortcut. I unclipped
a wall grate that provided an entrance to the air ducts, lifted it off and skinnied
through the hole into the dark, and then from the inside pulled the grate back into
position. That was always the hardest part, clipping the grate in place from inside. I
had to stick a finger through, then turn my elbow out and up so my finger could
reach the clip, then wiggle the clip until it caught. My fingers just weren’t long
enough, so it was always a frustrating moment or two until I succeeded. When I had
the grate in place, I turned and walked through the dark with a light steady breeze
tickling my cheek. I concentrated on counting the inlets as I passed them.
Changing the Ship from a colony transport into a city was as big a job as turning
my mother into an artist— her project ever since I could remember. And they had
this much in common: neither was completely successful, so far as I’m concerned.
In both cases there were a lot of loose ends dangling that should have been tied into
neat square knots.
As an example, the point where our quad left off and the ones on either side
began was completely a matter of administration, not walls. The quad itself, and
they’re all this way, was a maze of blank walls, blind alleys, endless corridors, and
staircases leading in odd directions. This was done on purpose— it keeps people
from getting either bored or lazy, and that’s important on a Ship like ours.
In any case, there are very few straight lines, so in order to save yourself
distances, you have to know which way to go. In a strange quad it’s quite possible
to get lost if you don’t have a guide, and every so often they broadcast a general
appeal to be on the lookout for some straying three-year-old.
I was in a hurry to make up lost time when I left the quad yard, so I had gone
straight to my shortcut. If the Ship were a person, the air ducts would be the
circulatory system. Your blood travels from your heart to your lungs, where it
passes off carbon dioxide and picks up oxygen; back to the heart; into the body,
where the oxygen is used and carbon dioxide is picked up; and then back to the
heart again. The air in the Ship goes through the ducts to the Third Level, where it
picks up oxygen; then through the ducts and into the Ship, where the air is breathed;