Origin

скачать книгу бесплатно


‘… Yes.’ Nervously, Paulis dug out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his neck. ‘I apologize.’

‘Don’t apologize.’

‘It’s just that I’m a little over-awed.’

‘Don’t be.’ Malenfant was still studying the somewhat squat lines of the booster stack. ‘Although I feel a little awe myself. I’ve come a long way from the first rocket I ever built.’

At age seventeen, Malenfant was already building and flying model airplanes. With some high-school friends he started out trying to make a liquid-fuelled rocket, like the BDB, but failed spectacularly, and so they switched to solid fuels. They bought some gunpowder and packed it inside a cardboard tube, hoping it would burn rather than explode. ‘We propped it against a rock, stuck on some fins, and used a soda straw packed with powder for a fuse. We spent longer painting the damn thing than constructing it. I lit the fuse at a crouch and then ran for cover. The rocket went up fifty feet, whistling. Then it exploded with a bang –’

Paulis said, reverent, ‘And Emma was watching from her bedroom window, right? But she was just seven years old.’

Malenfant was aware that the girl driver, Xenia, was watching him with a hooded, judgmental gaze.

Weeks back, in the course of his campaign to build support, he’d told the story of the toy rocket to one of his PR flacks, and she had added a few homely touches – of course Emma hadn’t been watching; though she had been a neighbour at that time, at seven years old she had much more important things to do – and since then the damn anecdote had been copied around the planet.