"Bruce Sterling - Think of the Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

The Iraqis felt they would gain a great deal of widely
applicable, widely useful scientific knowledge from their association
with Bull, whether his work was "peaceful" or not. After all, it was
through peaceful research on Project HARP that Bull himself had
learned techniques that he had later sold for profit on the arms
market. The design of a civilian nose-cone, aiming for the stars, is
very little different from that of one descending with a supersonic
screech upon sleeping civilians in London.

For the first time in his life, Bull found himself the respected
client of a generous patron with vast resources -- and with an
imagination of a grandeur to match his own. By 1989, the Iraqis were
paying Bull and his company five million dollars a year to redesign
their field artillery, with much greater sums in the wings for "Project
Babylon" -- the Iraqi space-cannon. Bull had the run of ominous
weapons bunkers like the "Saad 16" missile-testing complex in north
Iraq, built under contract by Germans, and stuffed with gray-market
high-tech equipment from Tektronix, Scientific Atlanta and Hewlett-
Packard.

Project Babylon was Bull's grandest vision, now almost within
his grasp. The Iraqi space-launcher was to have a barrel five hundred
feet long, and would weigh 2,100 tons. It would be supported by a
gigantic concrete tower with four recoil mechanisms, these shock-
absorbers weighing sixty tons each. The vast, segmented cannon
would fire rocket-assisted projectiles the size of a phone booth, into
orbit around the Earth.

In August 1989, a smaller prototype, the so-called "Baby
Babylon," was constructed at a secret site in Jabal Hamrayn, in central
Iraq. "Baby Babylon" could not have put payloads into orbit, but it
would have had an international, perhaps intercontinental range.
The prototype blew up on its first test-firing.

The Iraqis continued undaunted on another prototype super-
gun, but their smuggling attempts were clumsy. Bull himself had little
luck in maintaining the proper discretion for a professional arms
dealer, as his own jailing had proved. When flattered, Bull talked;
and when he talked, he boasted.

Word began to leak out within the so-called "intelligence
community" that Bull was involved in something big; something to do
with Iraq and with missiles. Word also reached the Israelis, who were
very aware of Bull's scientific gifts, having dealt with him themselves,
extensively.

The Iraqi space cannon would have been nearly useless as a
conventional weapon. Five hundred feet long and completely
immobile, it would have been easy prey for any Israeli F-15. It would
have been impossible to hide, for any launch would thrown a column