"Blish, James - King of the Hill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

King of the Hill
IT DID Col. Hal Gascoigne no good whatsoever to know that
he was the only man aboard Satellite Vehicle 1. No good
at all. He had stopped reminding himself of the fact some
time back.
And now, as he sat sweating in the perfectly balanced air
in front of the bombardier board, one of the men spoke to
him again:
"Colonel, sir"
Gascoigne swung around in the seat, and the sergeant
Gascoigne could almost remember the man's nameUirew
him a snappy Air Force salute.
"Well?"
"Bomb one is primed, sir. Your orders?"
"My orders?" Gascoigne said wonderingly. But the man
was already gone. Gascoigne couldn't actually see the ser-
geant leave the control cabin, but he was no longer in it.
While he tried to remember, another voice rang in the
cabin, as flat and razzy as all voices sound on an intercom.
"Radar room. On target."
A regular, meaningless peeping. The timing circuit had
cut in.
Or had it? There was nobody in the radar room. There
was nobody in the bomb hold, either. There had never been
anybody on board SV-I but Gascoigne, not since he had
relieved Grinnelland Grinnell had flown the station up
here in the first place.
Then who had that sergeant been? His name was . . .
It was . . .
The hammering of the teletype blanked it out. The noise
was as loud as a pom-pom in the echoing metal cave. He got
up and coasted across the deck to the machine, gliding in the
gravity-free cabin with the ease of a man to whom free fall
is almost second nature.
The teletype was silent by the time he reached it, and at
first the tape looked blank. He wiped the sweat out of his
eyes. There was the message.
MNBVCXZ LKJ HGFDS PYTR AOIU EUIO QPALZM
He got out his copy of The Well-Tempered Pogo and
checked the speeches of Grundoon the Beaver-Chile for the
key letter-sequence on which the code was based. There
weren't very many choices. He had the clear in ten minutes.
BOMB ONE WASHINGTON 1700 HRS TAMMANANY
There it was. That was what he had been priming the
bomb for. But there should have been earlier orders, giving
him the go-ahead to prime. He began to rewind the paper.
It was all blank.
AndWashington? Why would the Joint Chiefs of Staff
order him