Tourist Sam

Начало книги

Why did NASA fire Sam Gunn? It’d be better to ask why we didn’t fire the little S.O.B. out of a cannon and get rid of him once and for all. Would’ve been a service to the human race.

I’m no detective, but I smelled a rat when Sam put in a formal request for a three-month leave of absence. I just stared at my desktop screen. Sam Gunn, going through regular channels? Something was fishy. I mean, Sam never did things according to regulations. Give him a road map with a route on the interstates plotted out by AAA and he’d go down every dirt road and crooked alley he could find, just to drive my blood pressure up to the bursting point.

Trouble was, the sawed-off little runt was a damned good astronaut. About as good as they come, as a flyer and ingenious troubleshooter. Like the time he saved the lunar mission by jury-rigging a still and getting all the stranded astronauts plastered so they’d be unconscious most of the time and use up less oxygen.

Читать дальше →