"07 - Conrad's Time Machine (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

checkout sheet, but left the chick's phone number with Johnny, so if something
really important happened, he could get in touch with me.
Around one-thirty on a Saturday morning, I'd just gotten to her place when a
sergeant phoned. He asked for me, and said that I was scheduled for "special
duty" at eight that morning. He didn't know what it was all about, but I'd
better be there.
Well, I thought it must have been important or Johnny wouldn't have handed out
the number. See, I was one of only three techs who were trained to fix the Alert
Transmit Console, and it was about the only piece of equipment at The Notch that
wasn't duplicated.
The machine had a keyboard on it that was used to send messages like "fire all
of your missiles," but it wasn't a QWERTY. The keys were arranged in
alphabetical order.
None of the officers could type, since among our masters, such abilities were
considered unmanly.
The ATC had two Chevrolet ignition keys, mounted ten feet apart, so that it took
two men to operate it, at least from the front. They used it for calling
practice alerts, scrambling the bombers, and starting wars.
The controls inside the back of the ATC were a different matter. Once, Chris got
to playing with the buttons back there and managed to scramble the 99th Bomb
Wing. Those guys were over Hudson Bay, fueled up and with bombs ready, awaiting
orders from the President, before anybody else knew they were gone.
Nobody got on Chris's case for it, though, since none of the brass would believe
that an airman had enough brains to pull a stunt like that. Me, I knew that
Chris had an IQ in the 160's, but it would never occur to them to ask me about
it. To them, I was just another dumb trooper, too.
What got Chris thrown into the guardhouse this time was sweeping dirt under the
floor. Not under the carpet, you understand, but actually under the floor. Chris
was very strong, and he had a penchant for doing things the hard way.
Well, what with Chris in the guardhouse and me gone for the weekend, that only
left Johnny Quest qualified to work on the machine. If something happened to
Johnny and the ATC went west, SAC's third alternate Combat Operations Center
would be out of business, and you never could tell when they might want to start
a war.
And while I hated the Air Force, I still loved my country, so on the girl's
phone, I admitted to the sergeant that I was me.
I had to turn around and leave. I tried to kiss the chick goodbye, but she
wasn't the understanding sort. She screamed a lot about my wasting her whole
weekend and told me not to come back.
That night, I drove all the way back to Massachusetts without sleeping and got
on base with seven spare minutes to change into fatigues, report, and find out
what was happening.
What it was, was that the colonel had decided that the squadron area needed some
beautification.
Having a full bird colonel in command of a squadron was strange, but then a nine
hundred man squadron was pretty weird, too. The guy had been a hot fighter
jockey during World War II. He'd made all his rank during his first three years
in the service, and hadn't been promoted since. This made him an unhappy man,
and he didn't lead a happy squadron.
Boots were new troops who had finished tech school and were now idle for three