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

"You have been on my ray almost a minute. Why are you not correcting
course
and acceleration?"
"Doctor Stevens is computing us and has full control of course and
acceleration,"
replied Breckenridge. "He will answer you."
 "I am changing neither course nor acceleration because you are not in
position,"
declared Stevens, crisply. "Please give me your present supposed location, and
your
latest precision goniometer bearings on the sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, and
your
Tellurian reference limb, with exact time of observations, gyroscope zero-
planes, and
goniometer factors!"
"Correct at once or I shall report you to the Observatory," E2 answered
loftily,
paying no attention to the demand for proof of position.
"Be sure you do that, guyтАФand while you're at it report that your station
hasn't
taken a precision bearing in a month. Report that you've been muddling along
on loop
bearings, and that you don't know where you are, within seven thousand
kilometers.
And speaking of reportingтАФI know already that a lot of you astronomical
guessers have
only the faintest possible idea of where you really are, plus, minus, or
lateral; and if you
don't get yourselves straightened out before we get to W4i I'm going to make a
report
on my own account that will jar some of you birds loose from your upper
teeth!" He
unplugged with a vicious jerk, and turned to the pilot with a grin.
"Guess that'll hold 'im for a while, won't it, old egg?"
"He'll report us, sure," remonstrated Breckenridge. The older man was
plainly ill
at ease at this open defiance of the supposedly infallible check-stations.
"Not that baby," returned the computer confidently. "I'll bet you a small
farm
against a plugged nickel that right now he's working his goniometer so hard
that its
pivots are getting hot. He'll sneak back into position as soon as he can
calculate his
results, and pretend he's always been there."
"The others will be all right, then, probably, by the time we get to them
?"
"Gosh, noтАФyou're unusually dumb today, Breck. He won't tell anybody
anythingтАФhe doesn't want to be the only goat, does he?"
"Oh, I see. How could you dope this out, with only the recorder charts ?"
"Because I know the kind of stuff you pilots areтАФand those humps are