"Kristine Kathryn Rusch -- Recovering Apollo 8" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

overlooked the large yard and the rest of the block. The stove was directly across from him.
He always pictured his mother standing at it, even though she had a chair at the table as
well. His father's chair was to his left, beneath the windows.

The radio sat on top of the refrigerator, which wasn't too far from the stove. But the
center of the room, to his right and almost behind him, was the television, which remained
on constantly.

His father could read at the table, but Richard could not. His mother tried to converse
with him, but by his late childhood, the gaps in their IQs had started to show.
She was a smart woman, but he was off the charts. His father, who could at least
comprehend some of what his son was saying, remained silent in the face of his son'
genius. Silent and proud. They shared a name: Richard J. Johansenn, the J. standing for
Jacob, after the same man, the family patriarch, his father's father—the man who had come
to this country with his parents at the age of eight, hoping for—and discov-ering—a better
world.

That night, December 24,1968, the house was decorated for Christmas. Pine boughs
on the dining room table, Christmas cards in a sleigh on top of the living room's television
set. Candles at the kitchen table, which his father complained about every time he opened
his newspaper. The scent of pine, of candle wax, of cookies.

His mother baked her way to the holiday and beyond; it was a wonder, with all those
sweets surrounding him, that he never became fat. That night, however, they would have a
regular dinner, since Christmas Eve was not their holiday; their celebration happened
Christmas Day.

Yet he was excited. He loved the season—the food, the music, the lights against the
dark night sky. Even the snow, something he usually ab-horred, seemed beautiful. He would
stand on its icy crust and look up, searching for constellations or just staring at the Moon
herself, wonder-ing how something like that could be so distant and so cold.
That night, his mother called him in for dinner. He had been staring at the Moon through
the telescope that his father had given him for his eighth birthday in July. He'd hoped to see
Apollo 8 on its way to the lunar orbit.
On its way to history.

Instead, he came inside and sat down to a roast beef (or meatloaf or corned beef and
cabbage) dinner, turning his chair slightly so that he could see the television. Walter
Cronkite—the epitome, Richard thought, of the reliable adult male—reported from Mission
Control, looking seri-ous and boyish at the same time.

Cronkite loved the adventure of space almost as much as Richard did. And Cronkite
got to be as close to it as a man could get and still not be part of it.
What Richard didn't like were the simulated pictures. It was impossi-ble to film Apollo 8
on its voyage, so some poor SOB drew images.
 At the time, Richard, like the rest of the country, had focused on the LOS zone—the
Loss Of Signal zone on the dark side of the Moon. If the astro-nauts reached that, they were
part of the lunar orbit, sixty-nine miles from the lunar surface. But the great American
unwashed wouldn't know the as-tronauts had succeeded until they came out of the LOS
zone.