The Gambling Hell and the Sinful Girl
by Katherine MacLean
Abe was getting too big for the home barrel. He was six-foot-four and maybe still growing, and when he stood up straight his head was up past spin center in the barrel and spin gravity was pulling his head the other way. He said it made him feel dizzy and upside down.
We were sorry the barrel was so small but we couldn’t calculate any way to make it bigger, so Abe sat down a lot. When he sat down he stretched out his legs, and his legs were long legs and we tripped over him coming and going.
Ma always swore she’d never let any son of hers work at the Belt Foundry, not with those rowdy drinking men and their sinful shows in their recreation lounge, and their trips to the Gambling Hells on the Moon. She said they were bad company for a Christian. But then she tripped over Abe’s legs while she was carrying a pot of stew to the table.
Well, we all ran over to help clean up, and the piglets helped the most, even licking up the spots, but Ma got up mad with her mouth zipped tight closed and went back to the solar oven to cook up something else. She didn’t say a thing all the time she was cooking, like she was thinking. When she had a good hot meal of fish and potatoes out on the table she sat down with us and said the blessing and served us each out a helping, and then said what she’d been thinking.
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Среди авторов: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Andre Norton ...