"Incommunicado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

Cliff laughed. УYou exaggerate, kid. IТm only half the expert. Mike is the other half. Like two halves of a stage horse. I can see a course that I could take myself, but it has to go on automatic tapes for you. Mike can tell me if he can make a computer see it, too. If he can, youТll leave in an hour.Ф

Pierce brightened. УIТll go pack. Excuse me, Cliff.Ф

As Pierce shoved off towards the hatch, Mike Cohen came in, wearing a spacesuit unzipped and flapping at the cuffs, talking as easily as if he had not stopped since the last conversation. УDid you see the new movie during rest shift, Cliff? That hulking lout who played yourselfЧФ Mike smiled maliciously at Pierce as they passed in the semi-dark. УHi, Kid. Speaking of acts, who were you this time?Ф

УMichael E. Cohen,Ф said the youth, as he floated out. He looked back to see MikeТs expression and before shoving from sight added maliciously, УI always pick the character for whom my subject has developed the greatest shock tolerance.Ф

УOuch!Ф Mike murmured. УBut I hope I have no such edged tongue as that.Ф He gripped a crossbar and swung to a stop before Cliff. УThe boy is a chameleon,Ф he said, half admiringly. УBut I wonder has he any personality of his own.Ф

Cliff said flatly, УI like him.Ф

Mike raised his villainous black eyebrows and spread his hands, a plaintive note coming into his voice. УDonТt we all? It is his business to be liked. But who is it that we like? These mirror trained sensitivesЧФ

УHeТs a nice honest kid,Ф Cliff said. Outside, the constructor units flew up to the dome and buzzed around in circles waiting for control. Another bundle of parts from the asteroid belt foundry began to float by. Hastily Cliff seized a pencil and scrawled a diagram on a sheet of paper, then returned to the controls. УHe wants to go back to Earth. Could you tape that course? It cuts air for a sling turn at Venus.Ф

An hour later Mike and Cliff escorted the psychologist to his ship and inserted the control tapes with words of fatherly advice.

Mike said cheerfully: УYou will be running across uncharted space with no blinker buoys with the rocks, so you had better stay in the shock tank and pray.Ф

And Cliff said cheerfully, УIf you get off course below Mars, donТt bother signalling for help. YouТre sunk.Ф

УYou know, Cliff,Ф Mike said, Уtoo many people get cooked that way. Maybe we should do something.Ф

УHow about Mercury?Ф

УJust the thing, Cliff. Listen, Kid, donТt worry. If you fall into the Sun, weТll build a rescue station on Mercury and name it after you.Ф

A warning bell rang from the automatics, and the two pushed out through the air lock into space with Cliff protesting. УThatТs not it. About Mercury I meantЧФ

УHear the man complaining,Ф Mike interrupted. УAnd what would you do without me around to finish your sentences for you?Ф



Eight hours later Mike was dead. Some pilot accidentally ran his ship out of the assigned lanes and left the ionized gas of his jets to drift across a sector of space where Mike and three assistants were setting up the nucleus of the station power plant.

They were binding in high velocities with fields that put a heavy drain on the power plants of distant ships. They were working behind schedule, working fast, and using space gaps for insulation.

When the ionized gas drifted in everything arced.

The busy engineers in all the ring of asteroids and metalwork that circled Pluto saw a distant flash that filled their earphones with a howl of static, and at the central power plants certain dials registered a sudden intolerable drain, and safety relays quietly cut off power from that sector. Binding fields vanished and circular velocities straightened out. As the intolerable blue flash faded, dull red pieces of metal bulleted out from the damaged sector and were lost in space. The remainder of the equipment began to drift in aimless collisions.

Quietly the emergency calls came into the earphones of all sleeping men, dragging them yawning from their hammocks to begin the long delicate job of charting and rebalancing the great assembly spiral.

One of the stray pieces charted was an eighty-foot asteroid nugget that Mike was known to have been working on. It was falling irrevocably towards Pluto. For a time a searchlight glinted over fused and twisted metal which had been equipment, but it came no closer and presently was switched out, leaving the asteroid to darkness.

The damage, when fully counted, was bad enough to require the rebalancing of the entire work schedule for the remaining months of the project: subtracting the work hours of four men and all work on the power plant that had been counted done; a rewriting of an intricate mathematical jigsaw puzzle of hours; skills; limited fuel and power factors; tools; and heavy parts coming up with inexorable inertia from the distant sunward orbits where they had been launched over a year ago.

No one took the accident too hard. They knew their job was dangerous, and were not surprised when sometimes it demonstrated that point. After they had been working a while Cliff tried to explain something to Danny OrlandoЧDanny Orlando couldnТt make out exactly what, for Cliff was having his usual amusing trouble with words. Danny laughed, and Cliff laughed and turned away, his heavy shoulders suddenly stooped.