"Blish, James - The Real Thrill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

now. Most of the heavy machinery had been moved to other quarters and what had
been left for useless had rusted into unrecognizable lumps of scrap, amorphous,
contorted giants in the darkness. The ship itself lay on hydraulic risers, the
kind they had used to repair and scrape the underjets and a rickety gangplank,
lit yellowly by one dismal bare bulb, ran up to the airlock. The berylliumalloy
hull was pitted and burned in a hundred places--sightseers would think them ray
scars, but Burrowes recognized them as the ordinary marks of ten times a hundred
passages through the atmosphere. He stamped on the boards and a flight
lieutenant a little past his own age appeared from the dark interior, blinking
sleepily.
"You're the first all day,' he said, taking the money. "Come in." He fumbled in
the blackness and found a switch, and the corridors lit abruptIy. Bare bulbs
again--evidently the C2-77 antedated the general installation of gas-glow tubes.
"This passage," the officer began in a bored voice, "is the core of the ship,
running lengthwise from tubes to control-room. The gravity plates, which act
similarly to the modern geotron-stasis, are on the hull, so that the down
direction in flight is always away from the center--"
"I know," Burrowes interrupted. "I used to service these things. Designed the
engines for this type."
"That so?" said the officer, not much interested. "Well, I suppose there's
always a job for technies. Me, I have to hang around this tub and take people
through, and everybody else gets on the geotronic ships and gets some
excitement."
"Why isn't this one fightin'?" the girl wanted to know.
"Lord," said the officer indulgently. "This thing hasn't seen active service
since the Nationalist Coup. Against the Lunies it'd be practically helpless.
Those fellows have as good a navy as we have--they ought to--the lunar colonies
had a branch of the terrestrial service right in their hands when the rebellion
came." He slammed a bulkhead back viciously.
"This is the control room."
"Goodness," said the girl. It's upside down."
"It wouldn't be in space-- remember, out is down in flight."
Burrowes peered around interestedly, the older days coming back to him as he
marked the condition of the apparatus, but the things that attracted him didn't
appeal to the girl.
"Goodness," she said again. "What a lot of clock-faces."
"All necessary," the officer nodded, and mistaking the comment for a question,
pointed to them one by one. "Speed in MPS, acceleration in G's, fuel, oxygen,
tube heat, surface temperature, outside and inside atmospheric pressure, gravity
altimeter, circuit load indicators, detectors of various kinds--"
"Uh-huh," said the girl.
"Main rocket valves, steering rockets, braking rockets," the officer went on
relentlessly. "Search beam wheel and switch, starter, screen controls, lights,
silencers, wings, wing brakes, generators, landing gear. Compartment release
directly above you--"
"Rocket, hold, deck, control," Martin recited without looking, and the bored
lieutenant looked at him in surprise. "Yeah, that's right. Waste weight, that
release apparatus. Then there's the airlock, emergency lock, autopilot, air, gun
controls--"
"Uh-huh," said the girl. "Let's see somethin' else."