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

work. It was a very vividly pictured dream, as Joe thought of it. It would be unbearably bright where the
sun shone on it, and abysmally black in the shadows,тАФ except that sometimes the earthshine would
outline it in a ghostly fashion.
Most important, there would be men inside it, working, while it made a splendid orbit around the world
that had built it. Sometimes there'd be small shipsтАФ-so Joe envisioned itтАФwhich would fight their way up
to it, panting great plumes of rocket vapor, to bring food and air and fuel to its crew. And eventually there
would come a ship that wouldn't go down again to the vast and nearby world. It would fill its fueltanks
with the fuel the other ships had broughtтАФand it would have no weight at all. So it could be allowed to
drift away from the Platform and suddenly its rockets would spout flame and fumes, and it would head
triumphantly out and away from Earth. And it would be the first vessel ever to strike out for the stars.
That was the picture Joe had of the Space Platform and its meaning. Maybe it was romantic, but men were
laboring now to make it real. This transport plane flew now toward a small town improbably called
Bootstrap, carrying one of the most completely essential devices for the Platform's equipment. In the
desert near Bootstrap there was a gigantic construction shed. Inside it, men were building exactly the
monstrous object Joe imagined. They were trying to realize a dream men have had for decadesтАФ the
necessary platform' which would be the dock, the launching pad, the starting point from which the first of
human space explorers could start men's march toward infinity.
The idea that anybody could want to halt such an enterprise made Joe Kenmore burn.
The co-pilot painstakingly crushed out his cigarette. The ship flew with rather more of steadiness than a
railroad car upon its rails. There was the constant, oddly cushioned sound of the motors. It was all very
matter-of-fact.
"Look!" Joe said angrily, "Is any of what you've said тАФwellтАФkidding?"
"I wish it were, fella," said the co-pilot. "I can talk to you about it, but most of it's hushed up. I tell youтАФ"
"Why can you talk to me?" demanded Joe suspiciously. "What makes it all right for you to talk to me?"
"You've got passage on this ship. That means something!"
"Does it?"
The pilot turned in his seat to glance at Joe.
"Do you think we carry passengers regularly?" he asked mildly.
"Why not?"
Pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.
'Tell him," said the pilot.
"About five months ago," said the co-pilot, "an Army colonel wangled a ride to Bootstrap on a cargo
plane. The plane took off. It flew all right until it was twenty miles from Bootstrap. Then it stopped
checking. It drove straight for the Shed the Platform's built in. It was shot down. When it hit, there was an
explosion."
The co-pilot shrugged. "You won't believe it, maybe. But a week later they found the colonel's body back
East. Somebody'd murdered him."
Joe blinked.
"It wasn't the colonel who rode as a passenger," added the co-pilot unnecessarily. "It was somebody else.
Twenty miles from Bootstrap he'd shot the pilot and taken the controls. They figure he meant to dive into
the Shed. He had an atom bomb on board his plane. It's detonator didn't happen to work."
Joe saw the implication, here. Cranks and crackpots might hate the Platform. Many of them did. But they
couldn't get hold of an atomic bomb. It would take a large nation to have it on hand. So it wasn't only
cranks and crackpots who objected to the building of the Platform. There could be nations, not quite
willing to go to war, but certainly ready to try anything less. And the result in a strictly limited field would
be as near warfare as anybody dared.
The pilot said sharply, "Something down below!"
The co-pilot fairly leaped into the righthand seat. He
was in place and his safetybelt buckled in half a heartbeat.
"Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?" The pilot pointed.