"E. E. Doc Smith - Spacehounds Of IPC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

Space Hounds of IPC
(A Tale of the Inter-Plantary Corporation)

By Edward E. Smith


CHAPTER 1
The IPV "Arcturus" Sets Out for MarsтАФ

A narrow football of steel, the Inter-Planetary Vessel Arcturus stood upright
in her berth
in the dock like an egg in its cup. A hundred feet across and a hundred and
seventy feet
deep was that gigantic bowl, its walls supported by the structural steel and
concrete of
the dock and lined with hard-packed bumper-layers of hemp and fiber. High into
the air
extended the upper half of the ship of spaceтАФa sullen gray expanse of fifty-
inch
hardened steel armor, curving smoothly upward to a needle prow. Countless
hundreds
of fine vertical scratches marred every inch of her surface, and here and
there the
stubborn metal was grooved and scored to a depth of inchesтАФeach scratch and
score
the record of an attempt of some wandering cosmic body to argue the right-of-
way with
the stupendous mass of that man-made cruiser of the void.
A burly young man made his way through the throng about the entrance,
nodded
unconcernedly to the gatekeeper, and joined the stream of passengers flowing
through
the triple doors of the double air-lock and down a corridor to the center of
the vessel.
However, instead of entering one of the elevators which were whisking the
passengers
up to their staterooms in the upper half of the enormous football, he in some
way
caused an opening to appear in an apparently blank steel wall and stepped
through it
into the control room.
"Hi, Breck!" the burly one called, as he strode up to the instrument-desk
of the
chief pilot and tossed his bag carelessly into a corner. "Behold your computer
in the
flesh! What's all this howl and fuss about poor computation?"
"Ho, Steve!" The chief pilot smiled as he shook hands cordially. "Glad to
see you
againтАФbut don't try to kid the old man. I'm simple enough to believe almost
anything,