"Theodore Sturgeon - Killdozer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

'We'll get it done." Tom had little crinkles all around the outer ends of his eyes. He was a head taller than
Chub and rangy, and not so tough, and he was a real operator. Choosing him as a foreman for the
experiment had been wise, for he was competent and he commanded respect. The theory of airfield
construction that they were testing appealed vastly to him, for here were no officers-in-charge, no
government inspectors, no time-keeping or reports. The government had allowed the company a
temporary land grant, and the idea was to put production-line techniques into the layout and grading of
the project. There were six operators and two mechanics and more than a million dollars' worth of the
best equipment that money could buy. Government acceptance was to be on a partially completed basis,
and contingent on government standards. The theory obviated both gold-bricking and graft, and neatly
sidestepped the man-power problem. "When that black-topping crew gets here, I reckon we'll be ready
for 'em," said Tom.

He turned and scanned the island with an operator's vision and saw it as it was, and in all the stages it
would pass through, and as it would look when they had finished, with five thousand feet of
clean-draining runway, hard-packed shoulders, four acres of plane-park, the access road and the short
taxi way. He saw the lay of each lift that the power shovel would cut as it brought down the marl bluff,
and the ruins on top of it that would give them stone to haul down the salt-flat to the little swamp at the
other end, there to be walked in by the dozers.

'We got time to run the shovel up there to the bluff before dark."

They walked down the beach towards the outcropping where the equipment stood surrounded by crates
and drums of supplies. The three tractors were ticking over quietly, the two-cycle Diesel chuckling
through their mufflers and the big D-7 whacking away its metronomic compression knock on every easy
revolution. The Dumptors were lined up and silent, for they would not be ready to work until the shovel
was ready to load them. They looked like a mechanical interpretation of Dr. Dolittle's 'Pushme-pullyou,'
the fantastic animal with two front ends. They had two large driving wheels and two small steerable
wheels. The motor and the driver's seat were side by side over the frontтАФor smallerтАФwheels; but the
driver faced the dump body between the big rear wheels, exactly the opposite of the way he would sit in
a dump truck. Hence, in travelling from shovel to dumping-ground, the operator drove backwards,
looking over his shoulder, and in dumping he backed the machine up but he himself travelled
forwardтАФquite a trick for fourteen hours a day! The shovel squatted in the midst of all the others, its
great hulk looming over them, humped there with its boom low and its iron chin on the ground, like some
great tired dinosaur.

Rivera, the Puerto Rican mechanic, looked up grinning as Tom and Chub approached, and stuck a
bleeder wrench into the top pocket of his coveralls.

'She says 'Signalo,' " he said, his white teeth flashlighting out of the smear of grease across his mouth.
"She says she wan' to get dirt on dis paint." He kicked the blade of the Seven with his heel.
Tom sent the grin backтАФalways a surprising thing in his grave face.
'That Seven'll do that, and she'll take a good deal off her bitin' edge along with the paint before we're
through. Get in the saddle, Goony. Build a ramp off the rocks down to the flat there, and blade us off
some humps from here to the bluff yonder. We're walking the dipper up there."

The Puerto Rican was in the seat before Tom had finished, and with a roar the Seven spun in its length
and moved back along the outcropping to the inland edge. Rivera dropped his blade and the sandy marl
curled and piled up in front of the dozer, loading the blade and running off in two even rolls at the ends.
He shoved the load towards the rocky edge, the Seven revving down as it took the load, Mat Mat