"Whats It Like Out There by Edmond Hamilton" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

did happen, if we hadn't had that falSe alarm. The one that
set the whole camp wild that night, with guys shouting,
"Three's here! The rockets landed over west of Rock Ridgel"
Only when they charged out there, they found they
hadn't seen rockets landing at all, but a little shower of tiny
meteors burning themselves up as they fell.
It was the disappointment that did it, I think. I can't say
for sure, because that same day was the day I conked out
with Martian sickness, and the ffoor came up and hit me and
I woke up in the bunk, with somebody giving me a hypo,
and my head big as a balloon. I wasn't clear out, it was only
a touch of it, but it was enough to make everything foggy,
and I didn't know about the mutiny that was boiling up until
I woke up once with Breck leaning over me and saw he wore
a gun and an M.P. brassard now.
When I asked him how come, he said there'd been so
much wild talk about grabbing the four rockets and going
home that the M;P. force had been doubled and Nichols
had issued stern warnings.
"Walter?" I said, and Breck nodded. "He's a leader and
he'll get hit with a court-martial when this is over. The
blasted idiot!"
"I don't get ithe's got plenty of guts, you know that," I
said.
"Yes, but he can't take discipline, he never did take it very
well, and now that the squeeze is on he's blowing up. Well,
see you later, Frank."
I saw him later, but not the way I expected. For that was
the day we heard the faint echo of shots, and then the alarm
siren screaming, and men running, and half-tracks starting
up in a hurry. And when I managed to get out of my bunk
and out of the hut, they were all going toward the big
rockets, and a corporal yelled to me from a jeep, "That's
blown it! The damn fools swiped guns and tried to take
over the rockets and make the crews fly 'em homel"
I could still remember the sickening slidings and bounc-
ings of the jeep as it took us out there, the milling little
crowd under the looming rockets, milling around and hiding
something on the ground, and Major Weiler yelling himself
hoarse giving orders.
When I got to see what was on the ground, it was seven
or eight men and most of them dead. Walter had been shot
right through the heart. They told me later it was because
he'd been the leader, out in front, that he got it first of the
mutineers.
One M.P. was dead, and one was sitting with red all over
the middle of his uniform, and that one was Breck, and they
were bringing a stretcher for him now.
The corporal said, "Hey, that's Jergen, your squad
leader!"