"Colin Kapp - The Subways of Tazoo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kapp Colin)

"Second?" Fritz looked mildly surprised.
"Yes, I forgot to tell you. Your idea for obtaining pure nitrogen for the cats by fractional distillation in
the micro-Linde didn't solve the problem, it merely transferred it. The blasted Tazoon atmosphere's eaten
the guts out of the Linde compressor."
"That was all I needed to make my day!" said Fritz. "You'd better get the boys together, Jacko. I want
every repairable ground-cat and tractor prepared for operation, and as much heavy lifting and moving
tackle as we can acquire."
"What are you planning, Fritz?"
"Let's face it, Jacko, we can't keep enough transport in service to do the daily forty-kilometre
round-trips to the new site for very long. If that's a major site they've found there won't be much point in
having a base camp this far distant. The logical thing to do is expend all our resources, moving the whole
base to the new site."

"Are you crazy?" asked Jacko. "It'd take months to dis-mantle this lot and transport it that far."
"I said nothing about dismantling. A Knudsen hut is a unit structure. It is capable of being moved as a
whole. Can you think of any reason why we shouldn't just attach a cat or tractor to each hut and haul it
bodily over the sand to the new site?"
"Yes, Colonel Nash and the base psychiatrist, to name only two. A Knudsen could never stand a
belting like that and finish in one piece."
"Ordinarily, no, but these have been covered with alter-nate layers of resin and sand to a thickness
which has be-come ridiculous. Dammit, Jacko, you've got a metal and sand-filled resin laminate there
which must have all of a hundred and fifty times the strength of the original hut."
"You're dead right, of course," said Jacko. "But I'm going to love thinking of you trying to explain it to
Colonel Nash."

"All right," said Nash at last. "You can start moving the base just as soon as the necessary cables and
services have been laid. I don't need to remind you that everything has to be fully secured by sundown.
And I warn you that if anything goes wrong ..."
He leaned back speculatively for a moment.
"You know, Fritz, I must confess I'm disappointed. I'd expected great things from unorthodoxy, but
when it comes to the point you can't even promise to keep a decent transport system in operation."
"A snowflake," Fritz protested, "wouldn't stand much chance in Hell unless you had a ton of
refrigeration equip-ment alongside. The fault is not being in Hell, but in being a snowflake. You've got a
roughly similar position with your cats on Tazoo. A suitable cat could easily be designed for these
conditions, but it would need Terran resources to build it and a long haul to bring it out here. The cost
would be astronomical. The limitation is in associating transport with the idea of a ground-cat."
"I'm perfectly aware of that," said Nash. "In fact it's the reason I sent for you. You have the reputation
for pro-ducing the impossible at very short notice. All rightтАФI chal-lenge you to produce."
"Miracles we perform immediately," said Fritz quietly. "The impossible takes a little longer. After all,
we've only been here a week."

Nash watched him narrowly for a moment. "Fritz, frankly I don't believe anybody has the remotest
chance of doing what I ask, but I'm calling your bluff. If you have any sort of transport running on Tazoo
in three months' time I'll be glad to take back all the harsh things I've ever said about U.E. If you don't I'll
have to send you back to Terra. The Tazoon enterprise wasn't designed to carry any dead weight."
"It's a challenge I'll accept," said Fritz, "but don't expect to equate transportation with any vehicular
form you're used to, because the chances are a million to one against it looking like anything you've ever
seen before."

Jacko was waiting for him outside the office.