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

"Hi Joe!" boomed the chief. "Had breakfast?"
Joe nodded. He began to ask anxious questions. About steering rocket fuel and the launching cage release
and the takeoff rockets and the reduction valve from the air tanksтАФhe'd thought of that on the way overтАФ
and the shortwave and loran and radar. Haney nodded to some questions. Mike said briskly, "I checked" to
others.
The chief grunted amiably. "Look, Joe! We checked everything last night. We checked again this
morning. I even caught Mike polishing the ejection seats, because there wasn't anything else to be fixed!"
Joe managed a smile. The ejection seats were surely the most unlikely of devices to be useful today. They
were suppposedly life-saving gadgets. If the ship came a cropper on takeoff, the four members of its crew
were supposed to use ejection seats like those in jet planes. They'd be thrown clear of the ship, and ribbon
parachutes might open and might check their fall and might let them land alive. But it wasn't likely. Out in
space, of course, they'd be worse than useless. If a feather were dropped from six hundred miles up, by the
time it hit air it would be going so fast it would flame and burn from mere air friction. It wasn't likely any
of them would get out if things went wrong.
Somebody marched stiffly toward the four of them. Joe's expression grew rueful. The Space Project was
neither Army nor Navy nor Air Force, but something that so far was its own individual self. But the man
marching toward Joe was Lieutenant-Commander Brown, strictly Navy, assigned to the Shed as an
observer. And there were times when he baffled Joe. As now.
He halted, and looked as if he expected Joe to salute. Joe didn't. The lieutenant-commander said formally,
"I would like to offer my best wishes for your trip, Mr. Ken-more."
"Thanks," said Joe.
The lieutenant-commander said with careful cordiality, "You understand, of course, that I consider
piloting essentially a naval function, and it does seem to me that anything that can be called a ship should
have Navy personnel. But I assuredly wish you good fortune."
"Thanks," said Joe, again.
Brown shook hands, opened his mouth as if to speak again, didn't, and went away.
Haney rumbled in his throat. "How come he doesn't wish all of us good luck, but only you?"
"He does," said Joe. "But he's been trained not to mention it. I'd like to make a bet we'll have him as a
passenger out to the Platform some day."
"Heaven forbid!" growled Haney.
There was an outrageous tumult outside the gap in the Shed's wall plating. Something went shrieking past
the doorway. It looked like a magnified half loaf of bread, painted gray and equipped with an air scoop hi
front and a plastic bubble for a pilot. It howled like a lost baby dragon, and its flat underside tilted up and
up until it was almost vertical. It had no wings, but a blue-white flame spurted out of its rear, wobbling
from side to side for reasons best known to itself. It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a
jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did. It settled down on its flame-spouting tail, and the
sparse vegetation burst into smoky flame and shriveled, and the thingтАФstill shrieking like a foghorn in a
tunnelтАФflopped flat forward with a resounding clunk! It was abruptly silent.
But the total noise did not lessen. Another pushpot came soaring wildly into view, making hysterical
outcries. It touched and banged violently to Earth. Others appeared in the air beyond the construction
shed. One flopped so hard on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. It made ten
times more noise than beforeтАФthe flame from its tail making strange gyrations тАФand flopped back again
with a crash. Two others rolled over on their sides after touching ground. One ended up on its back like a
tumblebug, wriggling.
They seemed to land by hundreds, but their number was actually in scores. It was not until the last one
was down that Joe could make himself heard. The pushpots were jet motors in frames and metal skins,
with built-in jato tubes beside their engines. On the ground they were
quite helpless. It the air they were unbelievably clumsy. They were actually balanced and steered by vanes
in the blasts of their jets, and they combined the absolute maximum of sheer thrust with the irreducible
minimum of flyability.