"James Tiptree Jr. - Houston, Houston Do You Read" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

just like them. One of them. An alpha. They probably sense it underneath, the
beta bile. Had the jokes worn a shade thin in Sunbird, all that year going
out? A year of Bud and Dave playing gin. That damn exercycle, gearing it up
too tough for me. They didn't mean it, though. We were a team.

The memory of gaping jeans flicks at him, the painful end part the grinning
faces waiting for him when he stumbled out. The howls, the dribble down his
leg. Being cool, pretending to laugh too. You shit heads, I'll show you. 1 am
not a girl.

Bud's voice rings out, chanting "And a hap-pee New Year to you all down
there!" Parody of the oily NASA
tone. "Hey, why don't we shoot'em a signal? Greetings to all you Earthlings, I
mean, all you little Lunies. Hap-py New Year in the good year whatsis." He
snuffles comically. "There is a Santy Claus, Houston, ye-ew nevah saw nothin'
like this! Houston, wherever you are," he sings out. "Hey, Houston! Do you
read?"

In the silence Lorimer sees Dave's face set into Major Norman Davis,
commanding.

And without warning he is suddenly back there, back a year ago in the cramped,
shook-up command module of Sunbird, coming out from behind the sun. It's the
drug doing this, he thinks as memory closes around him, it's so real. Stop. He
tries to hang onto reality, to the sense of trouble building underneath.

-But he can't, he is there, hovering behind Dave and Bud in the triple
couches, as usual avoiding his official station in the middle, seeing beside
them their reflections against blackness in the useless port window. The outer
layer has been annealed, he can just make out a bright smear that has to be
Spica floating through the image of Dave's head, making the bandage look like
a kid's crown.

"Houston, Houston, Sunbird," Dave repeats; "Sunbird calling Houston. Houston,
do you read? Come in, Houston."

The minutes start by. They are giving it seven out, seven back; seventy-eight
million miles, ample margin.
"The high gain's shot, that's what it is," Bud says cheerfully. He says it
almost every day.

"No way." Dave's voice is patient, also as usual. "It checks out. Still too
much crap from the sun, isn't that right, Doc?"

"The residual radiation from the flare is just about in line with us," Lorimer
says. "They could have a hard time sorting us out." For the thousandth time he
registers his own faint, ridiculous gratification at being consulted.

"Shit, we're outside Mercury." Bud shakes his head. "How we gonna find out who
won the Series?"