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

"I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a hole hi that cloud."
The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered the cabin. "Beep ...... beep ..... beep
..... beep." They were thin, batlike squeaks, spaced a
full half-second apart, rising in pitch during their brief hearability. The co-pilot snatched a handphone
from the wall above his head and held it to his lips.
"Flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply. "Something's got a radar on us. We saw it. We're at eighteen
thousand andтАФ" here the floor of the cabin tilted markedlyтАФ"now we're climbing. Get a fix on us and
come a'running! Over!"
He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally, "Using radar is proof there's dirty work at the
crossroads. Somebody's taking a chance!"
Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the column between the two pilots' seats. He
said curtly, "Arm the jatos."
The co-pilot clicked down a lever and murmured, "Check!"
All this took place in seconds. The pilot had said, "I see something," and instantly there was swift, tense
teamwork hi action. A call by radio, asking for help. The plane climbing for greater clearance between it
and the clouds. The jatos made ready for firing. They were the jet-assisted-take-off rockets which on a
short field or a rough one would double the engine's thrust for a matter of seconds. In straightaway flight
they should make the plane leap like a scared rabbit. But they wouldn't burn long.
"I don't like this," said the co-pilot hi a flat voice. '1 don't see whatтАФ"
Then he stopped. Something zoomed out of a cloud. The thing was incredible and commonplace at the
same time. The thing that appeared was a silver winged private plane, two motored, of the sort that cruises
at
three hundred miles an hour and can do five, if pushed. It was expensive, but not large. It came straight up
out of the cloud layer and went lazily over on its back and dived down into the cloud layer again. It looked
like somebody stunting, against all reason, in clouds,тАФwhere a sensible man does not stunt. It looked like
the kind of crazy thing for which there is no justification.
But there was an explanation for this.
At the very top of the loop, threads of white smoke appeared. They should have been unnoticeable against
the cloud. But for the fraction of an instant they were silhouetted against the plane's own silver wings. And
they were not thin vapor. They were dense, sharply defined rocket trails.
They leaped upward. They unreeled a cord of writhing smoke. They gained velocity, instant by instant.
The pilot hit something with the heel of his hand. There was a heartstopping delay. Then the transport ship
leaped forward with a force to stop one's breath. The jatos bellowed and the ship jumped. The sound of the
motors was drowned out by the jatos' roar. Joe was slammed against the back of his seat. He struggled to
resist the force which pushed him tailward. He heard the pilot saying calmly.
"... rockets. If they're sidewinders or anything that homes on its target, we're sunk!"
But this was an undercover operation. It was intended to be murder. It was definitely intended to sabotage
the Space Platform. And saboteurs and murderers and undercover operators of all varieties have to work
against a definite handicap. They can't use equipment such as authorized personnel find useful. If a
saboteur uses a rocket, he can't test a sophisticated guidance system to be sure it will work right. There can
be no countdown on preparations for a murder; it has to be done when chance allows it. So the means used
to attack the transport plane had to be practically primitive; a two-motored private plane and rockets that
could track their target by the heat of its exhaust. An actual fighter plane would have had Joe and the
others absolutely at its mercy. But not a plane like this one.
The co-pilot said between his teeth; "Not sidewinders; no. But they'll have proximity fuses ..."
Then the plane bucked. At that moment it was very probably strained far past the limit of stress for which
it was designed. Only one rocket detonated. The others went off instants afterward. The rockets had
proximity fuses. Had they ringed the transport ship and gone off with it enclosed, it would now have been
a tumbling bit of wreckage. But the jatos had thrown it ahead and out of the rockets' target area. Now they
cut off and it seemed as if the ship had braked. But the pilot dived steeply for speed.