"Leinster, Murray - Pipeline to Pluto" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

"Sure," said Hill, sardonically. He paid. "O.K. now? Whadda I do now?"
"Go in the door here," said Crowder. "The cargo's grub. Get comfortable and lay flat on your back when you feel the carrier coming up to be hitched on for towing After the acceleration's over and you're in the Pipeline, do as you please"
"Yeah!" said Moore, giggling nervously "Do just as you please"
Hill said tonelessly
"Right. I'll start now."
He moved with a savage, infuriated swiftness. There was a queer, muffled cracking sound. Then a startled gasp from Moore, a moment's struggle, and another sharp crack.
Hill went into the nose of the carrier. He dragged them in. He stayed inside for minutes. He came out and listened, swinging a leather blackjack meditatively. Then he went over to the gate.
He called cautiously to the guard: "You! Slim! Crowder says come quick-and quiet! Somethin's happened and him and Moore got their hands full."
The guard blinked, and then came quickly. Hill hurried behind him to the loading pit. As the guard called tensely: "Hey, Crowder, what's the matter?"
Hill swung the blackjack again, with a certain deft precision. The guard collapsed.
A little later Hill had finished his work. The three men were bound with infinite, science. They not only could not escape, they could not even kick. That's quite a trick-but it can be done if you study the art. And they were not only gagged, but there was tape over their mouths beyond the gag, so that they could not even make a respectable groaning noise. And Hill surveyed the three of them by the light of a candle he had taken from his pocket-as he had taken the rope from about his waist-and said in husky satisfaction:
"O.K. O.K.! I'm givin' you fellas some bad news. You're headin' out to Pluto."
Terror-close to madness shone in the three pairs of eyes which fixed frantically upon him. The eyes seemed to threaten to start from their sockets.
"It ain't so bad," said Hill grimly. "Not like you think it is. You'll get there before you know it. No kidding! You'll go snakin'up at four gravities, and the air'll go out. But you won't die of that. Before you strangle, you'll freeze-and fast! You'll freeze so fast y'won't have time to die, fellas. That's the funny part. You freeze so quick you ain't got time to die! The Space Patrol found out a year or so back that that can happen, when things are just right-and they will be, for you. So the Space Patrol will be all set to bring you back, when y'get to Pluto. But it does hurt, fellas. It hurts like' hell!
I oughta know!"
He grinned at them, his mouth twisted and his eyes grim.
"I paid you fellas to send me out to Pluto last year. But it happened I didn't get to Pluto. The Patrol dragged my carrier out o' the Pipeline and over to Callisto because they hadda shortage o' rocket fuel there. So I' been through it, and it hurts.! I wouldn't tell on you fellas, because I wanted you to have it, so I took my bawlin' out for stowin' away and come back to send you along. So you' goin', fellas! And you' goin' all the way to Pluto! And remember this, fellas! It's gonna be good! After they bring you back, Out there on Pluto, every fella and every soul you sent off as stowaways, they'll be there on Pluto waitin' for you. It's gonna be good, guys! It's gonna be good!"
He looked at them in the candlelight, and seemed to take a vast satisfaction in their expressions. Then he blew out the candle, and closed the nose door of the carrier, and went away.
And half an hour before sunrise next morning the hydraulic platform pushed the carrier up, and a space tug hung expertly overhead and its grapnel came down and hooked in the tow ring, and then the carrier jerked skyward at four gravities acceleration.
Far out from Earth, the carrier went on, the latest of a long line of specks in infinity which constituted the Pipeline to Pluto. Many of those specks contained things which had been human and would be human again. But now each one drifted sedately away from the sun, and in the later carriers the stowaways still looked completely human and utterly tranquil. What had happened to them had come so quickly that they did not realize what it was. But in the last carrier of all, with three bound, gagged figures 'in its nose, the expressions were not tranquil at all. Because those men did know what had happened to them. More they knew what was yet to come.