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

take up some interceptor rockets to be used against anything of the sort. Of course you know all this!"
"It would seem to me," said Joe carefully, "that an attack on the Platform would be an act of war."
"Once upon a time, yes," said the major with irony,
"but now it will beтАФahтАФanonymous. Everybody will wonder aloud who would be so unkind as to blast
the Platform. Especially the people who do it. But we're building for peace. To start a war because
somebody interrupted it wouldn't be consistent. SoтАФthe Platform has to defend itself, for the moment.
You have a very worthwhile mission. I suggest that you have breakfast and get over to the Shed. I'm
leaving for there now."
"Yes, sir."
The major started for the door, then stopped.1 He said abruptly, "I'm quite aware, Joe, that if you're killed
by sabotage or carelessness, it's my fault."
"I'm sure, sir, that anybody can doтАФ"
"Anything anybody can do to destroy you will be tried," said the major. He was grim. "I'll have done my
best. Try to believe it."
Before Joe could answer, the major went out. Joe frowned for a moment. It occurred to him that it can't be
very pleasant to feel responsible for the things that other men's lives depend on, especially when you don't
share their danger. But just then the smell of coffee reached his nostrils. He trailed the scent. There was a
coffee pot steaming on the table in the dining room. There was a note on a plate;
"Good luck! I'll see you in the Shed. Sally."
Joe was relieved. Major Holt's daughter had been somewhere around underfoot all his life. He liked Sally,
but he was glad he didn't have to talk to her just now.
He poured coffee and looked at his watch. He went to the window, because the monstrous howling noises
were much nearer and dawn had definitely arrived. Patches of yucca and mesquite and sage stretched
away to a far-off horizon. They were now visibly different from the red-yellow earth between them. They
cast long, streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still undiscoverable.
Joe stared skyward, searching. He saw the Platform.
It was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It moved slowly toward the east, showing the
unmistakable glint of sunshine upon polished steel. It was the huge steel hull which had been built in the
gigantic Shed from whose shadow Joe now looked up. The Space Platform was the size of an ocean liner,
and six weeks since some hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once, had gotten it out of the Shed. They'd
panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten twelve miles high and speeding eastward at the topmost rate
they could manage. Then they'd fired jatos, all at once, and so pushed their and the Platform's speed up to
the preposterous. And then they'd dropped away and the giant steel object had fired its own rocketsтАФ
which made flames a mile longтАФand swept on out to space. It circled the Earth above the equator for
strategic reasons. Most of the inhabited parts of the earth passed under it within clear view. And it would
continue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never descending. It was a second moon for the planet
Earth.
But it could be destroyed.
Joe watched it hungrily as it went on to meet the sun. Smoothly, unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and
twinkling speck floated on out of sight. And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast quickly.
He wolfed it. He had an appointment to meet that glittering speck some thousands of miles out in
emptiness. His appointment was for a very few hours hence.
He'd been training for just this appointment since before the Platform's launching. There was a great box
swinging in twenty-foot gymbal rings over hi the Shed. There were motors and projectors and thousands
of transistors. It was a space flight simulatorтАФa descendent of the Link trainer which once taught pilots
how to fly. But this offered all the problems and all the sensations but one to be experienced in the takeoff
of a rocketship for space. The one missing sensation was heavy acceleration. The similitude of flight,
though, was utterly convincing. In six weeks they'd learned how to handle a spaceship so far as it could be
learned aground. They'd learned to face emergencies and calamities staged in horrifying detail. More than
once they'd come out of that training apparatus drenched with sweat and the feeling that they were lucky