"H. Beam Piper - Day of the Moron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Melroy replied. "And that tends to confirm the results of the tests they failed to pass."

"Oh, so that's the line you're taking. You persecute a man, and then say he has a persecution complex if
he recognizes the fact. Well, you're not going to get away with it, that's all I have to say to you." Crandall
flung the test-sheet he had been holding on to the desk. "That stuff's not worth the paper it's scribbled
on!" He turned on his heel in an automatically correct about-face and strode out of the office.




Melroy straightened out the papers and put them away, then sat down at his desk, filling and lighting his
pipe. He was still working at 1215 when Ben Puryear called him.

"They walked out on us," he reported. "Harry Crandall was out here talking to them, and at noon the
whole gang handed in their wrist-Geigers and dosimeters and cleared out their lockers. They say they
aren't coming back till Burris and Koffler come back to work with them."

"Then they aren't coming back, period," Melroy replied. "Crandall was to see me, a couple of hours ago.
He tells me that Burris and Koffler told him that we've been persecuting Burris; discriminating against him.
You know of anything that really happened that might make them think anything like that?"

"No. Burris is always yelling about not getting enough overtime work, but you know how it is: he's just a
roustabout, a common laborer. Any overtime work that has to be done is usually skilled labor on this job.
We generally have a few roustabouts to help out, but he's been allowed to make overtime as much as
any of the others."

"Will the time-records show that?"

"They ought to. I don't know what he and Koffler told Crandall, but whatever it was, I'll bet they were
lying."

"That's all right, then. How's the reactor, now?"

"Hausinger says the count's down to safe limits, and the temperature's down to inactive normal. He and
his gang found a big chunk of plutonium, about one-quarter CM, inside. He got it out."

"All right. Tell Dr. Rives to gather up all her completed or partially completed test records and come out
to the office. You and the others stay on the job; we may have some men for you by this afternoon;
tomorrow morning certainly."

He hung up, then picked up the communicator phone and called his secretary.

"Joan, is Sid Keating out there? Send him in, will you?"

Keating, when he entered, was wearing the lugubriously gratified expression appropriate to the successful
prophet of disaster.

"All right, Cassandra," Melroy greeted him. "I'm not going to say you didn't warn me. Look. This strike is
illegal. It's a violation of the Federal Labor Act of 1958, being called without due notice of intention,
without preliminary negotiation, and without two weeks' time-allowance."