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

The co-pilot blinked. Then he looked annoyed.
"Confound it, I didn't watch! Did you?"
When the pilot shook his head, the co-pilot said bitterly, "And I thought I was security conscious! Thanks
Jor telling me. No harm done this time, but that was a slip!"
He scowled at the dials before him. The plane flew on.
They passed the halfway mark of their journey. The two-thirds mark. They entered upon the last leg. It
should be no more than an hour and a half before they reached their destination. Joe felt a certain
anticipative elation. The Space Platform was a dream that had been his since he was a very small boy. It
was also the dream of grown men. There were Sputniks and TV satellites and weather satellites, and
there'd been astronauts and orbital flights. But in essence those were stunts. The Space Platform wouldn't
be?. It would be the beginning of the actual conquest of space. It would make real spacetravel possible. It
wouldn't make trips to the moon or planets itself, of course, rather, it would sail splendidly around the
Earth, in an orbit out past the Van Alien bands, and it would carry atomic-headed guided missiles, and
every city in the world would be defenseless against itтАФtherefore every city in the world would be
defended by it.
This last fact was why desperate efforts were in order to destroy it before it was completed.
The co-pilot spoke suddenly.
"How do you rate this trip? I asked before, but you dodged answering. Usually, even generals have to go
to Bootstrap aground. How do you rate it? Have you got connections hi Bootstrap?"
Joe pulled his thoughts back from what the Platform would mean hi years to come. He hadn't thought it
remarkable that he was allowed to accompany the gyros from his father's plant to their destination. The
family firm had built them, so it had seemed natural, to him. He wasn't used to the idea that everybody
was suspicious to a security officer connected with the Platform.
"Connections? I haven't any." Then he remembered. "Oh, yes. I do know somebody. Not hi Bootstrap,
though. There's a Major Holt out there. He might have cleared me. He's known my family for years."
"Yeah!" said the co-pilot, with irony. "He might have cleared you! Matter of fact, he's the senior security
officer on the whole job. He's hi charge of everything from the security guards to the radar screens and the
jetplane umbrella and the checking of the men who work hi the Shed. If he says you're clear, you're
cleared!"
Joe hadn't meant to seem impressive, "I don't know him too well," he explained. "He knows my father,
and his daughter Sally's been kicking around underfoot most of my life. I taught her how to shoot and
she's a better shot than I am. She was a nice kid when she was little. I got to like her when she fell out of a
tree and broke her arm and didn't even whimper." He grinned. "She was trying to act grown-up last time I
saw her."
The co-pilot nodded. There was a brisk chirping sound somewhere. The plane changed course. Sunlight
shifted as it poured into the cabin. The plane was running on automatic pilot, now, and was again well
above the cloudlevel at an even numbered number of thousands of feet altitude, as was suitable for planes
travelling south or west. Now it droned along its new course, forty five degrees from the original. Joe
found himself guessing that this was one of the security provisions for planes approaching
the Platform. It might be ordered that they not come too near on a direct line, lest they give information to
curious persons on the ground.
Time went on. Joe went gradually back to his meditations about the Platform. There was always in his
mind the picture of a manmade thing shining in blistering sunlight between Earth and moon. But he began
to remember things he hadn't paid too much attention to before.
There'd been opposition to the bare idea of a Space Platform from the instant it was first seriously
proposed. Nationalist political parties; peddlers of hate and entrepreneurs of discord; cranks and crackpots
and members of the lunatic fringe to the left and rightтАФall denounced it. Some called it impious. More
raved that it was a scheme to make the United States in a position to rule all the Earth. As a matter of fact,
the United States had first attempted to have it a United Nations enterprise. But it did not get past the
General Assembly. It was so rabidly attacked that it did not even reach the CouncilтАФ where it would have