"Carey Rockwell - Tom Corbett Space Cadet 06 - Treachery in Outer Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rockwell Carey)

CHAPTER 1
"All right, you blasted Earthworms! Stand to!"
 Three frightened cadet candidates for Space Academy stiffened their backs and stood
at rigid attention as Astro faced them, a furious scowl on his rugged features. Behind him,
Tom Corbett and Roger Manning lounged on the dormitory bunks, watching their unit mate
blast the freshman cadets and trying to keep from laughing. It wasn't long ago that they had
gone through the terrifying experience of being hazed by stern upperclassmen and they
knew how the three pink-cheeked boys in front of them felt.
"So," bawled Astro, "you want to blast off, do you?"
Neither of the three boys answered.
"Speak when you're spoken to, Mister!" snapped Roger at the boy in the middle.
"Answer the question!" barked Tom, finding it difficult to maintain his role of stern
disciplinarian.
"Y-y-yes, sir," finally came a mumbled reply.
"What's your name? And don't say 'sir' to me!" roared Astro.
"Coglin, sir," gulped the boy.
"Don't say 'SIR'!"
"Yes, sir-er-I mean, O.K.," stuttered Coglin.
"And don't say O.K., either," Roger chimed in.
"Yes ... all right . . . fine." The boy's face was flushed with desperation.
Astro stepped forward, his chin jutting out. "For your information," he bawled, "the
correct manner of address is 'Very well.'"
"Very well," stammered Coglin.
Astro shook his head and turned back to Tom and Roger. "Have you ever seen a
greater display of audacity and sheer gall?" he demanded. "The nerve of these three infants
assuming that they could ever become Space Cadets!"
Tom and Roger laughed, not at the three Earthworms, but at Astro's sudden eloquence.
The giant Venusian cadet usually limited his comments to a gruff Yes or No, or at most, a
garbled sentence full of a veteran spaceman's oaths. Then, resuming his stern expression,
Roger faced the three boys.
"Sound off! Quick!" he demanded.
"Coglin, John."
"Spears, Albert."
"Duke, Phineas."
"You call those names?" Roger snorted incredulously. "Which of you ground crawlers is
radar officer?"
"I am, very well," replied Spears.
The blond-haired cadet stared at him in amazement.
"Very well, what?" he demanded.
"You said that's the correct form of address," replied Spears doggedly.
Roger turned to Tom. "Well, thump my rockets," he exclaimed, "I didn't know they made
them that dumb any more!"
"Who is the command cadet?" asked Tom, suppressing a grin.
"I am, very well," replied Duke.
"How fast is fast?"
"Fast is as fast must be, without being either supersonic or turgid. Fast is necessarily
that amount of speed that will not be the most nor the least, yet will be sufficient unto the
demands of fast . . ." Duke quoted directly from the Earthworm Manual, a book that was not
prescribed learning in the Academy, but woe unto the Earthworm who did not know it by