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

Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly. "You got it! Yes, sir, you got it!"
The Chief took a deep breath.
"Yeah! And d'you know how I know? The Plant built a high speed centrifuge once. Remember?" He
grinned. "It was just a round plate with a shaft in the middle. There were vanes on the under side of the
plate. The shaft went in a hole that was away too big. But we blew compressed air up the shafthole. It
floated the plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate and it ran sweet as honey! Balanced itself and
didn't wobble a bit. We'll do something like that!"
"I need a crew to work on it," said Joe. "Three or four altogether. I can ask for anybody I need. I'm asking
for you. You pick the others."
The Chief grinned broadly.
"Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me and Joe here? Look!"
He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic tabletop, and then took a paper
napkin instead.
"Something like this...."
The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they'd beenj cooked in. The outside was seared and the inside
was hot and really rare. Intellectual exercises like the designing] of a machine-tool operation could not
compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of them fell to.
But they talked as they ate, absorbed and with deepening satisfaction as the steaks vanished and the
method they'd use took form in their heads. It wouldn't be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were
spinning around their centers of gravity, trimming the shaft would change the center. But the change
would be infinitely less than trimming off the rotor's rim. If they spun the rotors and used an abrasive on
the high side of the shaft as it turned...
" 'Going to have precision!" warned Mike. "Have to
have a polishing surface a quarterturn behind the cutter. That'll hold it."
Joe remembered afterward to be surprised that Mike knew gyro theory; at the moment he only swallowed
quickly so he could get the words out.
"Right! And if we cut too far down we can plate the bearing up to thickness and cut it down again..."
"Plate it with irridium," said the Chief. He waved a steak-knife. "This is going to Be fun. No tolerance,
Joe?"
"No tolerance/' agreed Joe. "Accurate within the limits of measurement."
The Chief beamed. The Platform was a challenge to all of humanity. The pilot gyros were essential to the
functioning of the Platform. To provide that necessity against impossible obstacles was a challenge to the
four who were undertaking it.
"Some fun!" repeated the Chief, blissfully.
They finished their steaks, talking. They consumed huge slabs of apple pie with preposterous mounds of
ice cream on top, still talking urgently. They drank coffee, interrupting each other to draw diagrams. They
used up all the paper napkins and were still at it when someone came heavily to the table. It was the
stocky man who had fought with Haney on the Platform. Braun.
He tapped Haney on the shoulder. The four looked up.
"We hadda fight today," said Braun in a queer voice. He was oddly pale. "We didn't finish. You wanna
finish?"
Haney growled. "That was a fool business," he said angrily. "That ain't any place to fight, up on the job!
You know it!"
"Yeah," said Braun in the same odd voice. "You wanna finish it now?"
"I'm not dodgin' any fight." Haney said formidably. "I didn't dodge it then. I'm not dodgin' it now. You
picked it. It was crazy! But if you got over the crazi-nessтАФ" ' Braun smiled a remarkably peculiar smile.
"I'm still crazy. We finish, huh?"
Haney pushed back his chair and stood up grimly.
"Okay, we finish it! You coulda killed me. I coulda killed you too, with that fall ready for either of us!"
"Sure! Too bad nobody got killed," said Braun.