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

'What's the matter with Dennis?" Tom wanted to know.

'Look yonder," said Peebles, waving his pipestem. Out on the beach Dennis was talking to Chub, in
Dennis' indefatigable style, standing beside Chub, one hand on Chub's shoulder. As they watched they
saw Dennis call his side-kick, Al Knowles.

'Dennis talks too much," said Peebles. "That most generally don't amount to much, but that Dennis, he
sometimes says too much. Ain't got what it takes to run a show, and knows it. Makes up for it by messin'
in between folks."

'He's harmless," said Tom.

Still looking up the beach, Peebles said slowly:

'Is, so far."

Tom started to say something, then shrugged. "I'll send you Rivera," he said, and opened the throttle.
Like a huge electric dynamo, the two-cycle motor whined to a crescendo. Tom lifted the dozer with a
small lever by his right thigh and raised the pan with the long control sprouting out from behind his
shoulder. He moved off, setting the rear gate of the scraper so that anything the blade bit would run off to
the side instead of loading into the pan. He slapped the tractor into sixth gear and whined up to and
around the crawling shovel, cutting neatly in under the boom and running on ahead with his scraper blade
just touching the ground, dragging to a fine grade the service road Rivera had cut.

*****

Dennis was saying, "It's that little Hitler stuff. Why should I take that kind of talk? 'You come from
Georgia,' he says. What is heтАФa Yankee or something?"

'A crackah f in Macon," chortled Al Knowles, who came from Georgia, too. He was tall and stringy and
round-shouldered. All of his skill was in his hands and feet, brains being a commodity he had lived
without all his life until he had met Dennis and used him as a reasonable facsimile thereof.

'Tom didn't mean nothing by it," said Chub.

'No, he didn't mean nothin'. Only that we do what he says the way he says it, specially if he finds a way
we don't like it. You wouldn't do like that, Chub. Al, think Chub would carry on thataway?"

'Sure wouldn't," said Al, feeling it expected of him.

'Nuts," said Chub, pleased and uncomfortable, and thinking, what have I got against Tom?тАФnot
knowing, not liking Tom as well as he had. "Tom's the man here, Dennis. We got a job to doтАФlets skit
and git. Man can take anything for a lousy six weeks."

'Oh, sho'," said Al.

'Man can take just so much," Dennis said. "What they put a man like that on top for, Chub? What's the
matter with you? Don't you know grading and drainage as good as Tom? Can Tom stake out a side hill
like you can?"