"Philip Jose Farmer - Tongues of the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

But the interstellar ship was now defenseless. It had launched every missile and anti-missile in its arsenal.
And the fuel for the tongue-generators was exhausted.
"Furthermore," said Shaposhnikov, commander of the Zemlya, "new USO has been picked up on the radar.
Four coming in from Earth. If these are also Axis, then the Zemlya has only two choices. Surrender. Or destroy itself."
"There is nothing we can do," replied Eratosthenes. "But we do not think those USO are Axis. We detected
four destroyer-sized objects leaving the vicinity of the USAF base, and we asked them for identification. They did not
answer, but we have reason to believe they are North American."
 "Perhaps they are coming to our rescue," suggested Shaposhnikov.
"They left before anyone knew you were being attacked. Besides, they had no orders from us."
"What do I do?" said Shaposhnikov.
Scone, who had tapped into the tight laser beam, broke it up by sending random pulses into it. The Zemlya
discontinued its beam, and Scone then sent them a message through a pulsed tongue which the Russian base could
tap into only through a wild chance.
After transmitting the proper code identification, Scone said, "Don't renew contact with Eratosthenes. It is
held by the Axis. They're trying to lure you close enough to grab you. We escaped the destruction of our base. Let me
aboard where we can confer about our next step. Perhaps, we may have to go to Alpha Centaurus with you."
For several minutes, the Zemlya did not answer. Shaposhnikov must have been unnerved. Undoubtedly, he
was in a quandary. In any case, he could not prevent the strangers from approaching. If they were Axis, they had him
at their mercy.
Such must have been his reasoning. He replied, "Come ahead."
By then, the USAF dishes had matched their speeds to that of the Zemlya's'. From a distance of only a
kilometer, the sphere looked like a small Earth. It even had the continents painted on the surface, though the effect was
spoiled by the big Russian letters painted on the Pacific Ocean.
Scone gave a lateral thrust to his vessel, and it nudged gently into the enormous landing-port of the sphere.
Within five minutes, his crew of ten were in the control room.
Scone did not waste any time. He drew his gun; his men followed suit; he told Shaposhnikov what he meant
to do. The Russian, a tall thin man of about fifty, seemed numbed. Perhaps, too many catastrophes had happened in
too short a time. The death of Earth, the attack by the Axis ships, and, now, totally unexpected, this. The world was
coming to an end in too many shapes and too swiftly.
Scone cleared the control room of all Zemlya personnel except the commander. The others were locked up
with the forty-odd men and women who were surprised at their posts by the Americans.
Scone ordered Shaposhnikov to set up orders to the navigational computer for a new path. This one would
send the Zemlya at maximum acceleration towards a point in the south polar region near Clavius. When the Zemlya
reached the proper distance, it would begin a deceleration which would bring it to a halt approximately half a kilometer
above the surface at the intended area.
Shaposhnikov, speaking disjointedly like a man coming up out of a nightmare, protested that the Zemlya was
not built to stand such a strain. Moreover, if Scone succeeded in his plan to hide the great globe at the bottom of a
chasm under an overhang... Well, he could only predict that the lower half of the Zemlya would be crushed under the
weightтАФeven with the Moon's weak gravity.
"That won't harm the animal tanks," said Scone. "They're in the upper levels. Do as I say. If you don't, I'll
shoot you and set up the computer myself."
"You are mad," said Shaposhnikov. "But I will do my best to get us down safely. If this were ordinary war, if
we weren't man'sтАФEarth'sтАФlast hope, I would tell you to go ahead, shoot. But..."
Ingrid Nashdoi, standing beside Broward, whispered in a trembling voice, "The Russian is right. He is mad.
It's too great a gamble. If we lose, then everybody loses,"
"Exactly what Scone is betting on," murmured Broward. "He knows the Russians and Chinese know it, too.
Like you, I'm scared. If I could have foreseen what he was going to do, I think I'd have put a bullet in him back at
Eratosthenes. But it's too late to back out now. We go along with him no matter what."