"SD Gottesman - Firepower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gotlieb Phyllis)

the 'scope.
By God, it was there. By all the twelve planets, so it was. The thing was bigger
than the Excalibur, Hertford's ship. It floated very far away and could be
spotted only by the superb display of illumination they'd put on, with taunting
intent, it seemed to the commander.
"Battle stations!" he yelled immediately. "Ready full fire-power." The lookout
spoke into a mike and stood by.
"GET IN TOUCH with him," snapped the commander. "When you get his wavelength
give me the speaker. I'll talk to him direct, whoever he is." Through his mind
were running confused visions of the glorious old days of piracy, when his
grandfather had so nobly fought in a ship a tenth the size of his own, to crush
the mighty federation of the gentlemen of fortune. "And," he said aloud, "by God
they did it."
The entire ship was buzzing confusedly with rumor. Each and every one of the
crew of a thousand and the marines who numbered half had his own private theory
half an hour after the strange lineship had been sighted. These ranged from the
improbably accurate notion that it was a rebel against the navy who was going to
raise some hell, to the equally absurd notion that the commander himself was the
rebel and the Admiral had sent his best ship to punish him. The truth, of
course, was too obvious to be guessed by anybody.
As the ship was readied for battle it seemed to draw on itself, like a crouching
tiger. Its skin seemed to be too small for it. Men stood as if rooted to the
metal floor-plates, but they quivered in tune with the accumulating mass-energy
of the drivers.
A fighting ship is built around its guns therefore a word about these may not be
out of place. The Excalibur had the most modern of armaments. From every
imaginable spot in its hide there could extrude the spaceship equivalent of old
sea-going "murder guns." Disgusted gunners gave that name to the little
quick-firers with which they picked off floating men and boats.
The Excalibur's "murder guns" were about a yard long with a caliber of three
inches between the lands. They were loaded with shells exploding on time; it
would be murder indeed to leave a score or more of contact shells floating
unexploded in space. The rate of fire from these little killers was adjusted
from single-shot to ten a second and never a jam from the loading mechanism.
There were intermediate guns as way. well, but more for their own sake than for
any practical use. The twelve-inch shells from these could blow a destroyer out
of space, but who ever heard of a line-ship fighting a destroyer? However, if
the occasion should arise, they were there, about twenty of them scattered
throughout the ship, covering every second of curved surface.
Finally there were the Big Guns. These were the reason for building the
Excalibur or anything like it. The rest of the ship was designed to service
those guns, store their ammunition, shelter the men who worked them, move them
about in space, and protect them from harm. The Big Guns were really big, so
there was no need for more than four of them. Two fore and two aft were
sufficiently heavy armament for any ship. One of these four happened to be out
of commission on Hertford's ship. That, he thought bitterly, would count heavily
against him in the fight that was coming.
"AIM GUN II, AFT," said the commander. There had been no answer from the mocking
fighting ship that had suicidally turned on every light it had. The thing was
still in plain view. Hertford did not draw nearer or even move for fear he would