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

be spotted. It was enough that he knew were his nameless foe was.
"Fire," said Hertford, "when ready."
From the magazine in the heart of the ship there slid along frictionless runways
barrel-like capsules of propulsive burner compound, which consisted of
big-moleculed acid and base which combined, in the presence of a catalyst, and
released monstrous clouds of gas in the fraction of a second. Following the
capsules there slid the Shell, approximately the size of a three-story suburban
villa.
Loading machinery, that looked as though it could be utilized in off moments to
build universes, fitted the shell into the breech and rammed it home, shoved
after it the burner compound that would shoot it on its way.
And all this while, in the quarter of the ship devoted to fire-control, two
hundred men had been sighting, resighting, calculating and recalculating at
batteries of machines to whom the integraph was as the amoeba is to the
mastodon.
The point is this: that Shell couldn't possibly miss, because to avoid it, the
colossal bulk of the nameless enemy would have had to begin moving only a second
after the order to fire when ready had been delivered. It was violating every
rule of warfare, and, the fire-control men were confident, it would not survive
the error.
The Gun finally moved on delicately jeweled bearings. This was going to be the
most direct hit of all time. Cubic yards of metal locked it in position.
Metallically, over the loudspeaker: "Ready to fire, commander."
The commander: "Then fire!"
There are no words to describe the discharge of a Big Gun and the progress of a
Shell through space towards a goal. But that mile-long battlewagon was rocked
like a sapling in a hurricane. When the initial shock was over the reeling
commander clung to a stanchion and glued his eye to the telescope fixed on the
nameless enemy.
It still glowed with lights; it still seemed to be a shade bigger then
the Excalibur. The feelings of the commander, subtly schooled to brutality and
murder, were mostly of exultation as he saw the Shell enter the field of the
telescope. Now, he thought, they would be frantically dashing about as it drew
nearer and desperately trying and trying to move a mass that could not be moved
in less time than it would take the Shell to contact it and explode.
Two seconds . . . one second . . .half--quarter--eighth--
"What the hell?" asked the commander with a childishly hurt air. He scratched
his head, and as he scratched it his lineship, the Excalibur, disintegrated in a
tangled, pulverized hell of metal, plastic, flesh, bone, Miss Beverly deWinder,
two hundred fire-control men, operating crew of a thousand, half that number of
marines and Commander Alexander Hertford III. They never knew what hit them, but
it was their own Shell.
CHAPTER IV
NEW METROPOLE, capital of Earth and, before the Navy took over, capital of the
All Earth Union and Colonies, was being pacified. This is done by lighter-loads
of marines and fighting sailors who descend from a lineship hanging ominously
over the most highly populated portion of the city. The lineship itself does not
descend because an uncalled bluff is worth more than a called one and because
the battlewagons cannot land from the moment they are launched to the moment
they are scrapped except in graving docks, and the nearest to Earth was at Alpha