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

Being bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatus was destroyed. Its precision lost, the whole device
was useless.
And it had taken four months work simply to get it balanced!
It had been the most accurate piece of machine work ever done on Earth. It was balanced to a microgram,
to a millionth of the combined weight of three aspirin tablets. It would revolve at 40,000 revolutions per
minute. It had to balance perfectly or it would vibrate intolerably. If it vibrated at all it would wrack itself
to pieces, or failing that send ageing sound waves through all the Platform's substance. If it quivered by
the least fraction of the ten thousandth of an inch, it would wear, and vibrate more strongly, and destroy
itself and possibly the Platform. It needed the precision of an astronomical telescope's lens, multiplied.
Since it was bent, it was exactly as useless as if it had never been made at all.
Joe felt as a man might feel if the greatest telescope on Earth, in his care, had been cracked. As if the most
priceless picture in the world, in his charge, had been burned. He felt worse.
A truck rolled up and was stopped by a guard. There was some conversation, and the guard let it through.
It was to pick up the useless pieces of equipment on which the best workmen and the best brains of the
Kenmore Precision Tool Company had worked unceasingly for eight calendar months, and which now
was junk.
Joe watched, numb6d by disaster, while the hoist lowered a hook down to position above the once
precious objects. Men shored up the heavy things and ran planks under them, and then deftly fitted
ropeslings for them to be lifted by. Shadows were slanting and longтАФit was now late afternoonтАФas the
hoisttruck's gears whined, and the slack took up, and the first of the four charred objects lifted and swung,
spinning slowly, to the truck that had come to take them away.
Joe froze. He stared. It settled into its place in the truck. He watched the second lift and rotate sedately as
the ropes unwound. The third did not spin. It merely swayed. But the fourthтАФThe lines up to the hoist-
beam were twisted, as the largest crate lifted, it untwisted the lines by which it hung. It spun. It spun more
and more rapidly, and then slowly, and it stopped, then it began to spin back.
Joe caught his breath. It seemed that he hadn't breathed in minutes. The big crate wasn't balanced. It was
spinning. It wasn't vibrating. It spun around its own center of gravity, unerringly revealed by its flexible
suspension.
He watched it nested in the truck. Then he went stiffly over to the driver of the car that had brought bun
here.
"Everything's all right," he said, feeling a queer astonishment at his own words. "I'm going to ride back to
the Shed with the stuff I brought. It's not hurt too much. I'll be able to fix it, with a man or two I can pick
out up here. But I don't want anything else to happen to it!"
So he rode back out to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that carried the crates. The sun set as he rode.
He was smudged and disheveled. The reek of charred
wood and burned insulation and scorched wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt like singing.
It occurred to him that he ought to have sent Sally a message that she didn't need to cry as a substitute for
him. He felt swell! He knew how to do the job that would let the Space Platform take off! He could hardly
wait to tell her.
It was very good to be alive.

5
THERE WAS nobody in the world to whom the Space Platform was meaningless. To Joe and a great many
people like him, it was a dream long and stubbornly held to, now doggedly being made into a reality. To
some it was the prospect of peace and the hope of a quiet life, with children and grandchildren and a
serene looking forward into the future. Some people prayed yearningly for its success, though they could
have no other share in its making. And of course there were men who had not gotten into power without
brains or stayed there without ruthlessness. They knew that once world peace was assured their time of
power and way of life was ended. So they sent grubby, desperate men to wreck the prospect at any cost.
They were prepared to pay for or commit any crime if the Space Platform could be smashed and turmoil