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

curved down. Below him there were twenty storeys of fall down through the steel-pipe maze of scaffolds.
If he took one step backward he was gone inexorably down a slope on which he could not stop.
He took that step. The stocky man's expression turned to pure horror. The lanky man stiffened
convulsively. He couldn't stop. He knew it. He'd go back and over the rounded edge, and fall. He might
touch the scaffolding. It would not stop him. It would merely set his body to spinning crazily as it dropped
and crashed and dropped, again and again, before it landed twenty storeys below.
It was horror in slow motion, watching the lean man stagger backward to his death.
Then Joe leaped.

4
FOR AN instant, in midair, Joe incongruously aware of all the noises of the Shed. The murky, girdered
ceiling twenty storeys still above him. The swelling, curving, glittering steel underneath. Then he struck.
He landed beside the lean man with his left arm outstretched to share his impetus. Alone, he would have
had momentum enough to carry him up the slope down which the lean man had begun to descend. But he
shared it. The two of them toppled forward together. Their arms were upon the flat surface while their
bodies almostтАФalmost!тАФslid. The feel of gravity pulling at them when they had nothing to grip was
purest nightmare.
But then, as Joe's inwards crawled, the same stocky man who'd knocked the lean man back was dragging
frantically at both of them to draw them to safety.
Then there were two men pulling. The stocky man's face was gray. His horror was proof that he hadn't
intended murder. The man who'd put down his welding torch pulled. The man who'd been climbing the
ladder put his weight to the task of getting them back to stable footing. They reached safety. Joe
scrambled to his feet. He felt a little bit sick at his stomach. The dark, stocky man began to shake horribly.
The lanky one advanced upon him.
"I didn't mean to keel you, Haney!" the dark one panted.
"Okay! You didn't!" The lanky one snapped. "But come on now! We finish this."
He advanced toward the man who had so nearly caused his death. But the other man dropped his arms to
his sides.
"I don' fight no more," he said thickly. "Not here. You keel me is okay. I don' fight no more. Not here!"
The lanky manтАФHaneyтАФgrowled at him. "Tonight, then, in Bootstrap. Now get back to work!" The
stocky man picked up his tools. He was trembling. Haney turned to Joe and said ungraciously, "Much
obliged. What's up?"
Joe still felt queasy. There is rarely any high elation after one has risked his life for somebody else. He'd
nearly plunged twenty storeys to the floor of the Shed. He swallowed.
"I'm looking for Chief Bender. You're Haney? Foreman?"
"Gang boss," said Haney. He looked at Joe and then at Sally, holding convulsively to the upright Joe had
put her hand on. "Yeah," said Haney. "The Chief took off today. Some kind of Injun stuff. Funeral,
maybe. Want me to tell him something? I'll see him when I go off shift."
There was an obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A tiny figure came out of a
crevice that would some day be an air-lock. Joe didn't move his eyes toward it.
"Tell him Joe Kenmore's in town and needs him," he
said awkwardly. "He'll remember me, I think. I'll hunt him up tonight."
"Okay," said Haney.
Joe's eyes went to the tiny figure that had come out from behind the plating. It was a midget in baggy,
work stained garments like the rest of the men up here. He wore a miniature welding shield pushed back
on his head. Joe could guess his function, of course. There'd be corners a normal sized man couldn't get
into, to buck a rivet or weld a plate. There'd be places only a tiny man could properly inspect. The midget
regarded Joe without expression.
Joe turned to the hoist to go down to the floor below. Haney waved his hand. The midget lifted his, in
grave salutation. The hoist dropped down the shaft.