"C M Kornbluth - Shark Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Salter said: "You'll feel differently after a good sleep. It was a great harvest, wasn't it? Enough weather
to make it tricky and interesting. Remember 276? That was the one that wore me out. A grind, going by
the book. But this time, on the fifteenth day my fore-topsail was going to go about noon, big rip in her,
but I needed her for my S-S balance. What to do? I broke out a balloon spinnakerтАФ now wait a minute,
let me tell it first before you throw the book at



meтАФand pumped my fore trim tank out. Presto! No trouble; fore-topsail replaced in fifteen minutes."



McBee was horrified. "You could have lost your net!"



"My weatherman absolutely ruled out any sudden squalls."



"Weatherman. You could have lost your net!"
 Salter studied him. "Saying that once was thoughtless, McBee. Saying it twice is insulting. Do you think
I'd gamble with twenty thousand lives?"



McBee passed his hands over his tired face. "I'm sorry," he said. "I told you I was exhausted. Of course
under special circumstances it can be a safe maneuver." He walked to a porthole for a glance at his own
ship, the nineteenth in the long echelon behind Grenville. Salter stared after him. "Losing one's net" was a
phrase that occurred in several proverbs; it stood for abysmal folly. In actuality a ship that lost its
phosphor-bronze wire mesh was doomed, and quickly. One could improvise with sails or try to jury-rig a
net out of the remaining rigging, but not well enough to feed twenty thousand hands, and no fewer than
that were needed for maintenance. Grenville's Convoy had met a derelict which lost its net back before
240; children still told horror stories about it, how the remnants of port and starboard watches, mad to a
man, were at war, a war of vicious night forays with knives and clubs.



Salter went to the bar and accepted from the Commodore's steward his first drink of the evening, a steel
tumbler of colorless fluid distilled from a fermented mash of sargassum weed. It was about forty per cent
alcohol and tasted pleasantly of iodides.



He looked up from his sip and his eyes widened. There was a man in captain's uniform talking with the
Commodore and he did not recognize his face. But there had been no promotions lately!



The Commodore saw him looking and beckoned him over. He saluted and then accepted the old man's