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Robert A. Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
Atec Февраль 29 2008 20:18:18
Книга только для ознакомления
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I had not owned a pressure suit for more than five years. Permanent
habitants of Golden Rule mostly do not own pressure suits; they don't need them,
they don't go outside. Of course there are plenty of staff and maintenance who
keep pressure suits always ready the way Bostonians keep overshoes. But the
usual habitant, elderly and wealthy, doesn't own one, doesn't need one, wouldn't
know how to wear one.
Loonies are another breed. Even today, with Luna City over a million and
some city dwellers who rarely if ever go outside, a Loonie owns his suit. Even
that big-city Loonie knows from infancy that his safe, warm, well-lighted
pressure can be broached-by a meteor, by a bomb, by a terrorist, by a quake or
some other unpredictable hazard.
If he's a pioneering type like Jinx, he's as used to a suit as is an
asteroid miner. Jinx didn't even work his own tunnel farm; the rest of his
family did that. Jinx habitually worked outside, a pressure-suited,
heavy-construction mechanic; "Happy Chance Salvage" was just one of his
dozen-odd hats. He was also the "Dry Bones Ice Company," "Henderson's Overland
Cartage Company," "John Henry Drilling, Welding, and Rigging Contractors"-or you
name it and Jinx would invent a company to fit.
(There was also "Ingrid's Swap Shop" which sold everything from structural
steel to homemade cookies. But not pressure suits
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