"Horace Gold - Inside Man & Other Science Fiction Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold Horace)

in an oversized mine shaft. And when it comes right down to it, Dowd, I'm tired of
you! That's why I'm leaving тАУ right now, at fourteen twenty-two hours on June third,
mean solar time тАУ and you can take your twelve shares andтАУ"
"Okay, okay," Dowd broke in.
"So long."
He slipped his shoes back into the magnetic galoshes that held him to the floor and
clumped, teetering, away.
Behind him, he heard the shrill mechanical whine of the lock motors, sealing off the
chamber where the rocket ship lay, and then the pumps that sucked the air out of the
giant lock. When the lock was empty, the outer panels whined open, the noise
coming shrilly through the rock; there was a sharp, shattering jar as the rockets
started тАУ then silences.
Dowd didn't even look around. It wasn't very interesting any more. Eggleston wasn't
the first engineer to depart in a huff. He was the seventeenth and the whole process
was becoming unpleasantly familiar.
Dowd took the elevator down and reported failure to the rest of the managing
committee. They accepted the news without comment; they were getting used to it
too.
Manson, the gray-haired supply manager, was the nearest to cheerful of the lot тАУ it
wasn't his problem. Except that of course, production was everybody's problem; if
there wasn't enough production, there wasn't enough pay. Still, he was able to say:
"Well, that's that. What do we do now?"
Dowd said glumly: "Call a general meeting. We'll have to put it up to the whole
membership."
Traffic Manager Pickett scowled. "Put what up? We haven't got an engineer and
we're not likely to get one. What's to discuss?"
Dowd shrugged, wishing he had the guts to call the ship back and join Eggleston in
leaving this place. "The only thing we can do, as I see it, is try to get along without
an engineer for a while. But that's a matter of Policy!"
Manson nodded. Policy required a general meeting; everybody knew that. He
reached over, picked up the P.A. microphone, flipped it on and spoke into it:
"Attention, everyone. Attention, everyone. General meeting in the Common atтАУ" he
glanced at his watch "тАУfifteen hundred hours exactly."
The committee was down at the mouth, but the miners didn't seem perturbed. It was
a kind of holiday for them. There wasn't much doing inside the 488 mile diameter of
Ceres, and even a general meeting, that invariable precursor of trouble, was better
than nothing.
The miners and their families came up out of the rock-built "houses" тАУ really
cubicles. Really, said the more disgruntled inhabitants, caves. They were laid out in
geometrically straight streets in the great, high-ceilinged chamber under the surface of
the asteroid. They were not notably pretty or comfortable, but they would do.
Enormous sun lamps hung, violet-glowing, on spindly cables from the ceiling; giant
street ventilators sucked out the old air and pumped in тАУ well, the same air, but
dried, cooled, de-carboned and re-oxidated.
It sounded like the noise of wind in trees тАУ or, anyway, that's what Dowd was in the
habit of saying in his wheedling letters to prospective members of the co-op.
Actually, what it sounded like was ventilators.
As general manager, Dowd led the committee toward the Common at the center of
town. It was the community's showplace тАУ synthetic grass, imitation trees, even a
small pool that used to have the unpleasant habit of creeping up over its margins and