"McCay, Bill - Stargate Rebellion" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCay Bill)

had succeeded in using the matter transmitter to plant the bomb on the
starship, blowing it up and ending the career of the alien which had
styled itself as a god. But since the THREE surviving Marines had
returned to Earth, no one had gone through the StarGate. West had not
only secured the missile silo that housed the artifact, he'd posted the
toughest combat Marines he could find for roundthe-clock guard duty.
Nothing was to go in or out of that alien dingus without his say-so.
Managing the threat factors on Earth gave him difficulty enough. He was
unwilling to throw an entire new world into his risk calculations.
However ... O'Neil's report also stated that among the resources of the
planet Abydos was a sizable deposit of Ra's magic quartz-crystal. Much
as West would like to decline the proffered invitation to the universe,
he had to consider the strategic implications. With a ready supply of
the quartz element, Earth's technical base specifically, that of the
United States-could advance by a quantum jump. Even better, the U.S.
would have an absolute lock on this new technology. The Japanese
wouldn't be able to horn in and usurp production, because the raw
material that was the bedrock for the technological wonders would be
available only from America. It would come out of a hole in an American
mountain. So what if it had to traverse a million light-years to get
there? According to O'Neil's report, the natives of Abydos conducted
their mining operation in an inefficient-in fact, downright
primitive-manner. Apparently, that was due to the alien god's strangling
grip on the people. All well and good, but the situation would have to
change. If this brave new technology were to go into production, the
factories would require regular shipments-in bulk. That would be the
only economic reason for keeping this portal to the unknown open.
Large-scale mining would require machinery and, of course, the people to
operate it. And those operators would have to be people General West
could control. At first he had thought of the Army Corps of Engineers.
They certainly had the knowhow, and they were Military, by God. But he'd
quickly identified a drawback to using the military's construction arm.
The requirement was secrecy. Could they depend on some shorttimer
driving a bulldozer not to come home and talk about his building job on
another planet? Once again West wished that O'Neil had blown up the
StarGate on the Abydos side and removed this problem before it landed in
the general's lap. If nobody knew this stuff existed ... But the
technology and the crystal did exist, and in the Pentagon's need-to-know
culture, it was up to West to make a decision about it. He hadn't
reached his rank by passing the buck. He had a reputation for making
the right choices in clutch situations. The decision he was leaning
toward was the mining option-with a sizable security complement in case
any more unpleasant surprises came down out of the sky. But the miners
wouldn't be soldiers. They'd come from the United Mining Consortium.
UMC had done lots of government work in the past-including a number of
sensitive overseas operations in conjunction with representatives of the
intelligence community. West had done his homework, assuring himself
that UMC not only had the resources but the right kind of people to do
this job-people who could keep their mouths shut. Even better, the
company was used to working in the Third World, which would be a plus in