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

have.
"Nothing big, anyhow," the co-pilot told him. "We'll know presently."
But examination showed no other sign of the ship's recent nearness to destruction. It had been
overstressed, certainly, but ships usually are. A spotcheck on certain areas where excessive flexing of the
wings would have shown upтАФa big ship's wings are not perfectly rigid; they'd come to pieces in the air if
they wereтАФpresented no evidence of damage. The ship was ready to take off again. , The co-pilot
watched jealously until the one mechanic went back to the sidelines. The mechanic was not cordial. He
and the others regarded the ship and Joe and the co-pilot with disfavor because they worked on jets, and to
suggest that they needed to be watched did not set well with them.
"They think I'm a suspicious heel," the co-pilot said sourly, "but I have to be! The best spies and saboteurs
in the world have been assigned to mess up the Platform. When better saboteurs are made, they'll be put
on the same job!"
The pilot came back from the control-tower.
"Special flight orders," he told his companion. "We top off with fuel and get going."
Mechanics got out the fuelhose, dragging it from the pit. One man climbed up on a wing. Other men
handed up the hose. Joe was moved to comment, but the co-pilot was reading the new flight instructions.
It was one of those moments of inconsistency to which everybody is liable. The two men of the ship's
crew had it in mind to be infinitely suspicious of anybody near their ship. But fuel-
ing it was so completely standard an operation that they read their orders while it went on.
One wingtank was full. A big, grinning man with sandy hair dragged the hose under the nose of the plane
to take it to the other wingtank. Close by the nosewheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft which
runs down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was absurdly ungraceful. When he stood up, his
arm slid up into the wheelwell. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it to the man on the
wing. Then that tank became full. The refueling crew got down to the ground and fed the hose back into
its pit. That was all. But somehow Joe remembered the sandy haired man and his arm going up inside the
wheelwell for part of a second.
The pilot tucked away his orders. The co-pilot tucked away his. He nodded to Joe, and the three of them
swung up and into the nose compartment by the pilot's doorway.
They settled into their places. There was that small, specific ritual of making absolutely sure that
everything requisite for a proper takeoff was ready. Then the pilot threw a switch and pressed a knob. One
motor turned over stiffly, and caught. The second. Third. Fourth. The pilot listened, glanced at the
instruments, and was satisfied. Word from the control tower. The pilot pulled back on the multiple
throttle. The plane trundled away. Minutes later it faced the length of the runway, a voice from the control
tower spoke out of a speaker in the wall, and the plane roared down the field. In seconds it lifted and
swept around in a great circle.
"Wheels up," said the pilot.
The co-pilot obeyed. The rest of the after-take-off ritual followed. Lights showed the wheels retracted, this
and that normal, these and those other items reporting all clear. The pilot relaxed.
"You know," said the co-pilot, "these saboteurs have some pretty smart tricks. We've been briefed on 'em.
One kind of hit me, though it's from away back in World War Two. Down in Brazil there was a field
where planes took off to fly to Africa. But they'd take off, head out to sea, get a few miles offshore, and
then blow up. A dozen planes
were lost that way! Then it broke. There was a sergeant in the maintenance crew who was sticking
handgrenades up in the nosewheel wells. German, he was, and very tidy about it, and nobody suspected
him. Everything looked okay and tested okay. But when the ship was well up and away, and the co-pilot
retracted the wheels, it lightened a string that pulled the pin of a grenade. It went off. The field's master
mechanic caught the saboteur finally and nearly killed him before the MPs could stop him. There's plenty
of that stuff. They pour it into us to make us cagey. And we are, whether the groundcrews like it or not!"
Joe said drily, "You were, except when they were topping off. You took that for granted." He told about
the sandy haired man. "He hadn't time to stick anything in there, though," he added.