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

intent all along; get me involved in a conversation and cage drinks off me all
night. I decided to play along. It was a slow, humid summer night, and I was
in the mood for a tall tale.

I got Jack to bring Cowboy Bob another MillerтАЩs and I pulled out my
cigarettes. Bob took a long hit off his beer, tilted the frayed rim of his hat
back a half inch, and leaned a little closer to me. тАЬDid I ever tell you about
how we got 444 cases of beer up to Skycan? Well...тАЭ
 ****

Ten years ago (Cowboy Bob told me) his crew was doing the final work on
SPS-1, the first large-scale solar power satellite to be built by Skycorp.
Almost five years and the labor of nearly three hundred men and women
had gone into the project, not to mention about $10 billion in corporate
investments and government loans. The result was the 21st century
equivalent to the Golden Gate Bridge: a landmark achievement in space
construction. All that remained to be done before the beginning of the
low-power tests was the final installment of the microwave dish antennas at
both ends of the thirteen mile span of the powersat.

тАЬSo we were pretty proud of what we had done here,тАЭ Bob recalled.
тАЬThere would be other powersats, of course, but this was the first big one,
and we were the crew that was putting on the finishing touches. That called
for some kind of celebration, right? So one night a few guys from the
second shift got together in one of the rec rooms and started talking about
what we wanted to do. As it turned out, everyone wanted a beer bust.тАЭ

The problem with that, of course, was that both Skycorp and NASA
had stringent regulations against alcoholic beverages being made available
to space work crews. The rules were tightly enforced; NASA inspectors
searched all outbound orbital and lunar crews for booze, and SkycorpтАЩs
security cops on Olympus Station had already found and torn out two stills
aboard the space station. Skycorp had tried to compromise with the
beamjacksтАЩ thirst by providing in the rec rooms non-alcoholic near-beerтАФa
weak, watery brew which tastes like chilled boar whizz.

тАЬThat just wasnтАЩt good enough,тАЭ Bob said. тАЬI mean, weтАЩd been
gagging on that stuff for the past eighteen months. We wanted real beer.
Budweiser, MillerтАЩs, Bush, Rolling Rock, Black Label...anything!тАЭ

He hefted his latest bottle to show what real beer looked like. тАЬAt this
point, yтАЩknow, nobody gave a damn about SkycorpтАЩs rules. The job was
done, our money was in the bank. Once the last bank of cells was laid down
and the antennas were installed, weтАЩd all be shipped home and it would be
the end of a long tour of duty. So we were willing to take some risks, break
some regs. Who cared? We were entitled to a good blowout, man.тАЭ

Getting beer onto Skycan entailed a smuggling operation, of course.
In the past, Skycan crews had managed to bribe KSC ground crews into
packing off-limits personal items into the orbital transfer vehicles which