"Allen Steele - Free Beer and the William Casey Society" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

Inside, Diamondback JackтАЩs is all space. On the walls are framed
photos and holos of Mark I, II, and III shuttles lifting off, of beamjacks
tethered to sections of powersats, moondogs building the mass driver at
Descartes station, Big Dummy HLVs coasting into orbit, and Olympus
Station revolving like a huge wheel in geostationary orbit above a crescent
earth. The bulletin board near the door is pinned with job openings and
torn-out articles from Aviation Week. Behind the long oak-top bar, along
with the varnished and mounted skin of the rattlesnake that Jack Baker
claims to have killed while fishing in the Everglades (тАЬSumbitch crawled into
my boat and I kilt it with my shotgun. Blew the bastardтАЩs head clean off.тАЭ),
are snapshots of spacers past and present, dead and alive, unknown and
infamous: Tiny Prozini, Joe Mama, Lisa Barnhart, Virgin Bruce Neiman,
Dog-Boy and Dog-Girl, Monk Walker, Mike Webb, Eddie the Gentle Goon,
Sandy Fey. ThereтАЩs a picture of Jack Baker, as a skinny young kid, standing
with Robert A. Heinlein, taken at a science fiction convention many years
ago. And thereтАЩs a picture of Cowboy Bob, wearing a hardsuit with his
helmet off, sneering at the camera. HeтАЩs wearing his trademark Stetson in
that picture.

I think Bob was born with that tan felt Stetson on his head. I donтАЩt think
it could be removed without surgery. Maybe heтАЩs got a pointed head
underneath. With his white beard, wrinkled eyes and bad teeth, though, heтАЩs
no singing cowpoke or last noble horseman. Bob was a space grunt. Once
he told me he couldnтАЩt stand horses.

When I knew him, Cowboy Bob was one of those hard-up
unemployed cases who were regular fixtures in JackтАЩs, pissing away the
money they had made years ago as beamjacks on the powersat project.
Jack was one of those semi-skilled young turks who had signed on with
Skycorp and spent two tough years in orbit on Olympus StationтАФSkycan,
as the vets knew the giant orbital base. They went because die pay was
good, or for the adventure, or because they were wanted back home by the
law, the I.R.S., or their former spouses. The ones who survived the
experience and didnтАЩt screw up came home to small fortunes in
accumulated back-pay and bonuses. Those guys bought restaurants or
small businesses, or just bought condos on the Cape and were lazy for the
rest of their lives.

Some other vets, though, screwed up and lost much of their pay to
fines and penalties. Those guys came back with not much more money in
the bank than they had before they left. Most of the grunts left the industry.
The ones who stayed, for the most part, tried to find ground jobs on the
Cape, or went overseas to work for the Europeans or the Japanese. A
handful of diehards tried to get another space job.

Cowboy Bob, the former Utah goat-roper who couldnтАЩt stand horses,
was one of those in the last category. Skycorp wouldnтАЩt rehire him, though;
nor would Uchu-Hiko or Arianespace. So he took small jobs for the little
companies which did short-term subcontract work for NASA or the Big
Three. But I donтАЩt think he ever left Earth again after he finished his contract