"Lensman 07 - Masters of the Vortex (The Vortex Blaster)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

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flower, or like a sun going nova.
Cloud's forebodings were more than materialized then for it was not only the bomb that was going off. The staggeringly immense energy of the vortex was merging with that of the detonating duodec to form an utterly indescribable explosion.
In part the flood of incandescent lava in the pit was beaten downward by the sheer, stupendous force of the blow; in part it was hurled abroad in masses, gouts, and streamers. And the raging blast of the explosion's front seized the fragments and tore and worried them to bits, hurling them still faster along their paths of violence. And air, so densely compressed as to act like a solid, smote the walls of the crater, Those walls crumbled, crushed outward through the hard-packed ground, broke up into jaggedly irregular blocks which hurtled screamingly in all directions.
The blast-wave or explosion front buffeted the flyer while she was still partially inert and while Cloud was almost blacked out and physically helpless from the frightful linear and angular accelerations. The impact broke his left arm and right leg; the only parts of his body not pressure-packed. Then, milliseconds later, the debris began to arrive.
Chunks of solid or semi-molten rock slammed against the hull, knocking off wings and control-surfaces. Gobs of viscous slag slapped it liquidly, freezing into and clogging up jets and orifices. The little ship was knocked hither and thither by forces she could no more resist than can a floating leaf resist a cataract; Cloud's brain was addled as an egg by the vicious concussions which were hitting him so nearly simultaneously from so many different directions.
The concussions and the sluggings lightened ... stopped ... a vast peace descended, blanket-wise. The flitter was free-was riding effortlessly away on the outermost, most tenuous fringes of the storm!
Cloud wanted to faint, then, but he didn't-quite. With one arm and leg and what few cells of his brain were still in working order, he was still in the fight. It did not even occur to him, until long afterwards, that he was not going to make any effort whatever to avoid death.
Foggily, he tried to look at the crater. Nine-tenths of his visiplates were dead, but he finally got a view. Good-it was out. He wasn't surprised-he knew it would be.
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His next effort was to locate the secondary observatory, where he would have to land; and in that, too, he was successful. He had enough intelligence left to realize that, with practically all of his jets clogged and his wings and tail shot off, he couldn't land his flitter inert. He'd have to land her free.
Neal Cloud was not the world's best pilot. Nevertheless, by dint of light and somewhat unorthodox use of what few jets he had left, he did land her free. A very good landing, considering -he almost hit the observatory's field, which was only one mile square-and having landed her, he inerted her.
But, as has been intimated, his brain wasn't working quite so good; he had held his ship inertialess for quite a few seconds longer than he thought, and he did not even think of the terrific buffetings she had taken. As a result of these things, however, her intrinsic velocity did not match, anywhere nearly, that of the ground upon which she lay. Thus, when Cloud cut his Ber-genholm, restoring thereby to the flitter the absolute velocity and the inertia she had before going free, there resulted a distinctly anticlimactic crash.
There was a last terrific bump as the motionless vessel collided with the equally motionless ground; and 'Storm' Cloud, Vortex Blaster, went out like the proverbial light.
Help came, of course; on the double. Cloud was unconscious and the flitter's port could not be opened from the outside, but those were not insuperable obstacles. A plate, already loose, was torn away; the pilot was undamped and rushed to Base Hospital in the 'meat-crate' standing by.
Later, in a private office of that hospital, the head of the Vortex Control Laboratory sat and waited-not patiently.
'How is he, Lacy?' he demanded, as the surgeon-marshal entered the room. 'He's going to live?'
'Oh, yes, Phil-definitely yes,' Lacy replied, briskly. 'A very good skeleton; very good indeed. His screens stopped all the really bad radiation, so the damage will yield quite readily to treatment. He doesn't really need the Phillips we gave him- for the replacement of damaged parts, you know-except for a few torn muscles and so on.'
'But he was pretty badly smashed up-I helped take him out, you know-how about that arm and leg? He was a mess.'
'Merely simple fractures-entirely negligible.' Lacey waved aside with an airy gesture such minor ills as broken bones. 'He'll
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be out in a couple of weeks.'
'How soon can I see him? Business can wait, but there's a personal matter that can't.'
'I know what you mean.' Lacy pursed his lips. 'Ordinarily I wouldn't allow it, but you see him now. Not too long, though, Phil; he's weak. Ten minutes at most.'
'QX. Thanks.' A nurse led the visiting Lensman to Cloud's bedside.
'Hi, stupe!' he boomed, cheerfully. ' "Stupe" being short for "stupendous", this time.'
'Ho, chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down.'
'You're the most-wanted man in the galaxy, not excepting Kimball Kinnison. Here's a spool of tape, which you can look at as soon as Lacy will let you have a scanner. It's only the first one. As soon as any planet finds out that we've got a sure-enough-vortex-blower-outer who can really call his shots-and that news gets around mighty fast-it sends in a double-urgent, Class A Prime demand for you.'
'Sirius IV got in first by a whisker, but it was a photo finish with Aldebaran II and all channels have been jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega, Rigel, Spica. Everybody, from Alsakan to Zabriska. We announced right off that we wouldn't receive personal delegations-we had to almost throw a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians out bodily to make them believe we meant it-that our own evaluation of necessity, not priority of requisition, would govern. QX?'
'Absolutely,' Cloud agreed. 'That's the only way to handle it, I should think.'
'So forget this psychic trauma ... No, I don't mean that,' the Lensman corrected himself hastily. 'You know what I mean. The will to live is the most important factor in any man's recovery, and too many worlds need you too badly to have you quit now. Check?'
'I suppose so,' Cloud acquiesced, but somberly, 'and I've got more will to live than I thought I had. I'll keep on pecking away as long as I last.'
'Then you'll die of old age, Buster,' the Lensman assured him. 'We got full data. We know exactly how long it takes to go from fully inert to fully free. We know exactly what to do to your screens. Next time nothing will come through except light, and only as much of that as you like. You can wait as close to a
vortex as you please, for as long as is necessary to get exactly the conditions you want. You'll be as safe as if you were in Klono's hip pocket.'
'Sure of that?'
'Absolutely-or at least, as sure as we can be of anything that hasn't happened yet. But your guardian angel here is eyeing her clock a bit pointedly, so I'd better do a flit before she tosses me out on my ear. Clear ether, Storm!'
'Clear ether, chief!'
Thus 'Storm' Cloud, nucleonicist, became the most narrowly-specialized specialist in the long annals of science; became 'Storm' Cloud, the Vortex Blaster.
And that night Lensman Philip Strong, instead of sleeping, thought and thought and thought. What could he do-what could anybody do-if Cloud should get himself killed? Somebody would have to do something ... but who? And what? Could-or could not-another Vortex Blaster be found? Or trained?
And next morning, early, he Lensed a thought.
'Kinnison? Phil Strong. I've got a high-priority problem that will take a lot of work and a lot more weight than I carry. Are you free to listen for a few minutes?'
'I'm free. Go ahead.'
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3: Cloud Loses an Ann
Tellurian Pharmaceutical, Inc., was Civilization's oldest and most conservative drug house. 'Hide-bound' was the term most frequently used, not only by its younger employees, but also by its more progressive competitors. But, corporatively, Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., did not care. Its board of directors was limited by an iron-clad, if unwritten, law to men of seventy years or more; and against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger generation was exactly as efficacious as the dashing of ocean waves against an adamantine cliff-and in very much the same fashion.
Ocean waves do in time cut into even the hardest rock; and, every century or two, TPI did take forward step-after a hundred years of testing by others had proved conclusively that the 'new' idea conformed in every particular with the exalted standards of the Galactic Medical Association,
TPI's plant upon the planet Deka (Dekanore III, on the charts) filled the valley of Clear Creek and the steep, high hills on its sides, from the mountain spring which was the creek's source to its confluence with the Spokane River.
The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the intensive cultivation of medicinal plants. Along both edges of the valley extended row after row of hydroponics sheds. Upon the mountains' sides there were snake dens, lizard pens, and enclosures for many other species of fauna.
Nor was the surface all that was in use. The hills were hollow; honeycombed into hundreds of rooms in which, under precisely controlled environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown hundreds of widely-variant forms of life.