"Murray Leinster - Space Platform" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The co-pilot spoke explosively and furiously in the blasting uproar of the engines. He vengefully marked the
waybill of the parcel that had blown up. But then they went back on the job. They worked well as a team, now.
In no more than minutes everything was out but the four crates that were the gyros. The co-pilot regarded them
dourly, and Joe clenched his fists. The clamshell doors closed, and it became possible to hear onesself think,
again.
"Ship's lighter," reported the co-pilot, back in the cabin. "Tell 'em this is what exploded."
The pilot reported the waybill number and description of the case that had been an extra bomb. There had been
much thought and effort expended to make quite sure the gyros would not arrive at the Space Platform. It was
even possible to guess that more than one kind of sabotage had been intended for the transport ship. It looked
as if different enemies of the Platform had worked independently of each other, though with similar
information about the transport's cargo.
"I'm dumping gas now," said the pilot into the microphone, "and then coming in for a bellylanding."
The ship flew straightaway. It flew more lightly. It bounced a little. But when gas is dumped one has to slow ID
not more than a hundred seventy-five knots and fly level, and then one is supposed to fly five minutes after
dumping with the dumping chute in the drain positionтАФ ;md even then there is forty-five minutes of flying fuel
still in the tanks.
The ship swept around and headed back for the now far distant field. It went slowly lower and lower until it
seemed barely to skim the minor irregularities in the ground. And, low down like this, the sensation of speed
was great.
The co-pilot went back into the cargo space. He brought back an armful of chutes. He dumped them on the
floor. "If that grenade does go!" he said sourly. Joe helped. In the few minutes before Bootstrap loomed near,
they filled the bottom of the cabin with packed parachutes. Especially around the pilots' chairs. And there was a
mound of them above the actual place where the grenade should be. Soft stuff like packed chutes will absorb an
explosion better than harder material. But there was a chance it wouldn't blow. "Hold fast," said the pilot curtly.
The wing-flaps were down. That slowed the lightened ship a little. They went in over the edge of the field less
than a manheight high. Joe found his hands closing convulsively on a handgrip. He saw a crashwagon starting
out from the side of the runway. A firetruck started for the line the plane followed.
Four feet above the rushing ground surface. Three. The pilot eased back the stick. His face was craggy and
grim and very hard. The ship's tail went down and dragged. It bumped. Then the plane careened and slid and
half whirled crazily; the world seemed to come to an end. Crashes. Bangs. Shrieks of torn metal. Bumps.
Thumps and grindings. Then a roar.
Joe pulled himself free from where he'd been flung тАФit seemed to him that he peeled himself looseтАФfound the
pilot struggling up, and grabbed at him to help. The
co-pilot hauled at both of them, and abruptly all three were in the open and running full speed away from the
ship.
The roar became a bellowing. There was an explosion. Another. Flames sprouted everywhere. The three of
them ran stumblingly. But even as they ran the co-pilot swore.
"We skipped something!" he panted. "That fireтАФ"
Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something exploded with a racking detonation. But
he should be far enough away, now.
He turned to look, and he saw blackening wreckage enveloped in a roaring fire. The flames were monstrous.
They rose, it seemed, sky-high; more flames than forty-five minutes of gasoline should have produced. As he
looked, something blew up shatteringly, and flames raged even more furiously. In such heat the delicately
adjusted gyros would be warped and ruined, even if the crash hadn't wrecked them beforehand. Joe made thick,
incoherent sounds of rage.
The plane was now an incomplete and twisted skeleton, licked through by flames. The crashwagon squealed to
a stop beside them.
"Anybody hurt? Anybody left behind?"
Joe shook his head, unable to speak for fury. The fog wagon roared up, already spouting mist from its nozzles.
Its tanks contained water treated with detergent so that it broke into the finest of droplets when sprayed at four