"Carey Rockwell - Tom Corbett Space Cadet 07 - Sabotage in Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rockwell Carey)

CHAPTER 1

"Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g!-"
With a hollow booming sound reminiscent of old eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century clock towers, the electronic time tone rang out from the
Tower of Galileo, chiming the hour of nine. As the notes reverberated over the
vast expanse of Space Academy, U.S.A., the lights in the windows of the
cadet dormitories began to wink out and the slidewalks that crisscrossed the
campus, connecting the various buildings, rumbled to a halt. When the last
mournful note had rolled away to die in the distant hills, the school was dark
and still. The only movement to be seen was the slow pacing of the cadet
watch officers, patrolling their beats; the only sound, the measured clicking of
their boots on the metal strips of the slidewalks.
On the north side of the quadrangle near the Tower, a young watch officer
paused in front of one of the dormitories and scanned the darkened windows
of the durasteel and crystal building. Satisfied that all was in order, he
continued on his lonely way. A moment later a shadowy figure rose out of the
bushes opposite the dormitory entrance and stepped forward quickly and
cautiously. Pausing on the slidewalk to stare after the disappearing watch
officer, the figure was illuminated by the dim light from the entrance hall. He
was a young man wearing the royal-blue uniform of a Space Cadet. Tall and
wiry, with square features topped by a shock of close-cropped blond hair, he
stood poised on the balls of his feet, ready to move quickly should another
watch officer appear.
After a quick glance at his wrist chronometer, the young cadet darted
across the slidewalk toward the transparent crystal portal of the dormitory.
Hesitating only long enough to make certain that the inner hallway was clear,
he slid the portal open, ducked inside, and sprinted down the hall toward a
large black panel on the wall near the foot of the slidestairs. On the panel, in
five long columns, were the name plates of every cadet quartered in the
dormitory and beside each plate were two words, IN and OUT, with a small
tab that fitted over one of the words.
Out of the one hundred and fifty cadets in the dormitory, one hundred and
forty-nine were marked IN. The slender, blond-haired cadet quickly made it
unanimous, reaching up to the tab next to the name of Roger Manning and
sliding it over to cover the word OUT. With a last final look around, he raced
up the slidestairs, smiling in secret triumph.
***
In Room 512 on the fifth floor of the dormitory, Tom Corbett and Astro, the
two other cadets who, with Roger Manning, made up the famed Polaris unit of
the Space Cadet Corps, were deep in their studies. Though the lights-out
order had been given over the dormitory loud-speaker system, the desk lamp
burned brightly and there was a blanket thrown over the window. The boys of
the Polaris unit weren't alone in their disobedience. All over the dormitory,
lights were on and cadets were studying secretly. But they all felt fairly safe,
for the cadet watch officers on each floor were anxious to study themselves
and turned a blind eye. Even the Solar Guard officer of the day, in charge of
the entire dormitory, was sympathetic to their efforts and made a great deal of