Have Space Suit — Will Travel

A wonderful, kind, and dynamic novel by master of the pen R. Heinlein can captivate both children and adults. What do you need for a good and incredible adventure? Just determination, courage, kindness—and… an old spacesuit won in a lottery.

In short, I got a spacesuit.

And that’s how it happened.

— Dad, I said, I want to go to the Moon.

— Please, he replied, and again he went back to his book. He was reading “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)” by Jerome K. Jerome, which I think he already knew by heart.

— Listen, Dad, I mean it seriously.

He answered:

— I told you I’m allowing it. Go.

— Yeah… But how?

— Hm? A little surprise crossed his face. — Well, how is… that’s your concern, Clifford.

That’s the kind of dad I have. When I told him I wanted a bicycle, he said, “Go ahead, buy it,” without even looking up from the book—so I went to the dining room, where we had a basket full of money, and I wanted to take the amount I needed. But in the basket there were only eleven dollars and forty-three cents—so between me and the bicycle there wasn’t just one mile of cut lawns. And I didn’t ask my dad again, because if there’s no money in the basket, then there’s no money anywhere.

My father doesn’t want to burden himself with bank accounts—he just keeps a money basket at home, and next to it another one marked “Uncle Sam.” Every year he packages what’s inside in an envelope and sends it to the government. His way of paying taxes keeps the financial inspectorate regularly on the brink of rage. Once, even a representative of it was sent to us to talk to my father in a serious way. At first he clamped down, but then he pleaded:

— Listen, Doctor Russell, we know who you are. And you’d be absolutely unforgivable to refuse to keep records in the required format.

— And what makes you think I don’t keep them? my father asked. — I do, and very carefully. Right here— and he tapped his finger against his forehead.

— But the law requires that records be kept in written form.

— Then you should read the laws more carefully, my father advised. — There isn’t such a law at all that would demand people be able to read and write. Would you like some more coffee?