《The First Mars Mission》作者： - Robert F. Young【EPUB】

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Robert F. Young has written 39 stories for FampSF over the years and we canthink of only three writers who have contributed as much fiction as Mr. YoungPoul Anderson Avram Davidson and Ron Goulart. A Robert Young story isalways a pleasure because its high quality is as predictable as its subject matter isunpredictable. Here he begins with an old sf notion — quotThey built the spaceshipin Larrys back yard...quot — and creates something quite different and affecting. The First Mars Mission BY ROBERT F. YOUNG They had built the spaceship in Larrys back yard. His back yard was bigger than either Chans orAls. This was because his parents house was on the outskirts of town where the houses were far apartand did not belong to blocks where in some cases the whole countryside stretched away from your backdoor. Larry had had no idea then that someday he would become a real astronaut. Mars had fascinatedhim as much as it had Al and Chan but in his heart what hed really wanted to become was a fireman. For landing jacks they used a pair of old sawhorses Al found in the loft of his fathers garage. Uponthem they nailed the deck — a platform constructed of scrap lumber they swiped from behind the newschool building. Chans father who was a junk dealer had already told them they could borrow the bigconical vented tin smokestack hed quotcollectedquot when the old Larrimore grain machinery factory was torndown and one simmering July afternoon they freed it from the debris in the rear of the fenced-in junkyardand rolled it all the way across town to Larrys house. There panting and perspiring they jockeyed itonto the deck and braced it with three toenailed two-by-fours. Scraping and painting the stack took them two days. It didnt cost them anything though becausethere were all kinds of paint cans in Larrys basement with varying quantities of paint still in them. Notwo of the colors were the same but by mixing the brightest ones together they came up with a beautifulgreenish blue. On the third day after the paint had dried sufficiently they installed the ion-drive — a 3-HP Briggs ampStratton motor Als father