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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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We had just spent most of three days in rolling seven hundred kilometers.
Now we traveled fifteen hundred kilometers in eighteen minutes.
We had to shoulder our way out of the capsule and into the tube station
because there were Shriners impatiently awaiting the opportunity to board for
Kong. I heard one say that "they" (that anonymous "they" who are to blame for
everything)- "they ought to put on more cars." A Loonie tried to explain to him
the impossibility involved in his demand-just one tube, able to handle only one
capsule, which could be at this end or at the far end or in free flight in
between. But never two capsules in the tube-impossible, suicidal.
His explanation met with blank disbelief. The visitor seemed to have
trouble, too, in grasping the idea that the ballistic tube was privately owned
and totally unregulated... a matter that came up when the Loonie finally said,
"You want another tube, go ahead! Build it! You are free to do so; nobody is
stopping you. If that doesn't satisfy you, go back to Liverpool!"
Unkind of him. Earthworms can't help being earthworms. Every year some of
them die through inability to comprehend that Luna is not like Liverpool, or
Denver, or Buenos Aires.
We passed through the lock separating the pressure owned by Artemis Transit
Company from the municipal pressure. In the tunnel just beyond the lock was a
sign: GET YOUR AIR CHITS HERE
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