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

blotting and pulling like a supercharged ox as it fired slowly enough for them to count the revolutions.

'She's a hunk of machine," said Tom.

'A hunk of operator, too," gruffed Chub, and added, "for a mechanic."

'The boy's all right," said Kelly. He was standing there with them, watching the Puerto Rican operate the
dozer, as if he had been there all along, which was the way Kelly always arrived places. He was tall, slim,
with green eyes too long and an easy stretch to the way he moved, like an attenuated cat. He said,
"Never thought I'd see the day when equipment was shipped set up ready to run like this. Guess no one
ever thought of it before."

'There's times when heavy equipment has to be unloaded in a hurry these days," Tom said. "If they can
do it with tanks, they can do it with construction equipment. We're doin' it to build something instead, is
all. Kelly, crank up the shovel. It's oiled. We're walking it over to the bluff."

Kelly swung up into the cab of the big dipper-stick and, diddling the governor control, pulled up the
starting handle. The Murphy Diesel snorted and settled down into a thudding idle. Kelly got into the
saddle, set up the throttle a little, and began to boom up.

'I still can't get over it,'" said Chub. "Not more'n a year ago we'd a had two hundred men on a job like
this."

Tom smiled. "Yeah, and the first thing we'd have done would be to build an office building, and then
quarters. Me, I'll take this way. No timekeepers, no equipment-use reports, no progress and yardage
summaries, no nothin' but eight men, a million bucks worth of equipment, an' three weeks. A shovel an' a
mess of tool crates'll keep the rain off us, an' army field rations'll keep our bellies full. We'll get it done,
we'll get out and we'll get paid."

Rivera finished the ramp, turned the Seven around and climbed it, walking the new fill down. At the top
he dropped his blade, floated it, and backed down the ramp, smoothing out the rolls. At a wave from
Tom he started out across the shore, angling up towards the bluff, beating out the humps and carrying fill
into the hollows. As he worked, he sang, feeling the beat of the mighty motor, the micrometric obedience
of that vast implacable machine.

'Why doesn't that monkey stick to his grease guns?"

Tom turned and took the chewed end of a matchstick out of his mouth. He said nothing, because he had
for some time been trying to make a habit of saying nothing to Joe Dennis. Dennis was an ex-accountant,
drafted out of an office at the last gasp of a defunct project in the West Indies. He had become an
operator because they needed operators badly. He had been released with alacrity from the office
because of his propensity for small office politics. It was a game he still played, and completely aside
from his boiled-looking red face and his slightly womanish walk, he was out of place in the field; for
boot-licking and back-stabbing accomplish even less out on the fields than they do in an office. Tom,
trying so hard to keep his mind on his work, had to admit to himself that of all Dennis' annoying traits the
worst was that he was as good a pan operator as could be found anywhere, and no one could deny it.

Dennis certainly didn't.

'I've seen the day when anyone catching one of those goonies so much as sitting on a machine during