"Joe Haldeman - The Forever War (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

With such large amounts of energy stored in a soldier's weapons, itwouldn't be practical
forhimtohackouta hole in the frozen ground with the conventional pick and shovel. Still, you can
launch grenades all day and get nothing but shallow depressions-so the usual method is to bore a
hole in the ground with the hand laser, drop a timed charge in after it's cooled down and,
ideally, fill the hole with stuff. Of course, there's not much loose rock on Charon, unless you've
already blown a hole nearby.
The only difficult thing about the procedure is in getting away. To be safe, we were told, you've
got to either be behind something really solid, or be at least a hundred meters away. You've got
about three minutes after setting the charge, but you can't just sprint away. Not safely, not on
Charon.
The accident happened when we were making a really deep hole, the kind you want for a large
underground bunker. For this, we had to blow a hole, then climb down to the bottom of the crater
and repeat the procedure again and again until the hole was deep enough. Inside the crater we used
charges with a five-minute delay, but it hardly seemed enough time-you really had to go it slow,
picking your way up the crater's edge.
Just about everybody had blown a double hole; everybody but me and three others. I guess we were
the only ones paying really close attention when Bovanovitch got into trouble. All of us were a
good two hundred meters away. With my image converter turned up to about foily power, I watched
her disappear over the rim of the crater. After that, I could only listen in on her conversation
with Cortez.
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joe narneman
"I'm on the bottom, Sergeant." Normal radio procedure was suspended for maneuvers like this;
nobody but the trainee and Cortez was allowed to broadcast
"Okay, move to the center and clear out the rubble. Take your time. No rush until you pull the
pin."
"Sure, Sergeant." We could hear small echoes of rocks clattering, sound conduction through her
boots. She didn't say anything for several minutes.
"Found bottom." She sounded a little out of breath.
"Ice or rock?"
"Oh, it's rock, Sergeant The greenish stuff."
"Use a low setting, then. One point two, dispersion four."
"God dam it, Sergeant, that'll take forever."
"Yeah, but that stuff's got hydrated crystals in it-heat it up too fast and you might make it
fracture. And we'd Just have to leave you there, girl. Dead and bloody."
"Okay, one point two dee four." The inside edge of the crater flickered red with reflected laser
light.
"When you get about half a meter deep, squeeze it up to dee two."
"Roger." It took her exactly seventeen minutes, three of them at dispersion two. I could imagine
how tired her shooting arm was.
"Now rest for a few minutes. When the bottom of the hole stops glowing, arm the charge and drop it
in. Then walk out, understand? You'll have plenty of time."


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"I understand, Sergeant. Walk out." She sounded nervous. Well, you don't often have to tiptoe away
from a twenty-microton tachyon bomb. We listened to her reathing for a few minutes.
"Here goes." Faint slithering sound, the bomb sliding ~Iown.