"Who Needs Insurance by Robin Scott" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 2)

books on mathematics which have no numbers in them, just
alphabets, and which cost about twelve dollars a running inch.
I went to see Mac because I had to scratch my curiosity itch,
and because besides being a first-rate technical mind, Mac had
been a friend since we had been boys together in Mumford
Junction.
Mac offered me a beer from the avgas compressed air beer
cooler in the corner of his office and set me at ease with the
back-home southern Indiana drawl he affected. I'd lost mine
at Bloomington, in college. MIT and the sophistication of
Boston had intensified Mac's,
"How's it goin'. Ace," he drawled. Mac called everybody
"Ace." Everybody he liked, that is.
"Like a hawg with both feet in the trough," I answered,
slipping back into Mumford Junction to make Mac feel good.
Mac took a long pull on his beer. "Just about creamed
yourself on that Ploesti party, didn't you?" He looked out
from under his bushy red eyebrows and down his long arched
nose at me, and his eyes twinkled. "I'm glad you made it,
Ace."
"Thanks, Mac." His pleasure was sincere, and I was
touched. "Have you seen what's left of the Goldbrick?"
"Yeah, I seen it, and I seen better lookin' junk spreadin'
fertilizer on your old man's back forty. You could just as well
have left it for the Krauts in Ploesti. I ain't gonna be able to
fix it up none."
"D'you check it out before you scrapped it? Go over the
engines or anything?"
"What I wanna do that for? I had a crew pull out what we
could use for spares and then tow the carcass over to the
boneyard. Anyway," he exclaimed, sitting up from his mori-
bund slouch, "one of them engines is all burned up, two is
shot to pieces, and I believe you buried the other with full
military honors out there off'n the end of Four-Five runway."
I explained about flying all the way home from Rumania
on one engine and about the extra eight hundred horsepower.
This really sat him up. He uncurled his six-foot-four and went
over to the beer cooler, eyeing me all the time. He knew me
too well, however, to go into the "you must be nuts."
"Full RPM at full high pitch, eh?" he muttered as he
opened a can for himself and one for me. His can opener was
a tool steel die set into an unpowered drill press.
I didn't answer his mutter. He paced a moment, the foam
from his beer can dripping to the concrete floor, and then:
"Come on. Ace. Let's go dig that baby up,"
He called for a crash truck, and beckoning to the duty crew
chief, he swung behind the wheel and we sped off through the
cool desert night, bumping over the low dunes at the end of
Four-Five. Even with the blackout lights, it didn't take long to
find the crater. There'd been plenty of oil pressure m that