"Theodore Sturgeon - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

must have been all of nine and a half feet. "What?" she cried.

Lucius Emery looked up and smiled cheerfully at her. "Put him to sleep to make some tests," he
called up. "Now I got to walk him until he wakes up, to keep some water going through his gills till
he snaps out of it. Who's your other friend, B.J.?"

"I beg your pardon, Parker. Congressman Parker, Lu. Come to see how we handle government
money."

"Just like throwing it into the ocean, eh, Congressman? I heard of you." And he laughedтАФa good
laugh, echoing round and round the big tank.

"What," asked the Congressman tautly, "do you do when heтАФuhтАФ'snaps out of it'?"

"Go some place else," said the ichthyologist.

Admiral Nelson laughed. "That Lu... he'd rather make friends with a fish than be remembered as one
of the world's great physical chemists, which he also happens to be."

" 'Remembered' is probably the word," said Parker sweatily.

"Is he that Emery?" breathed Dr. Hiller.

The Bureau chief began to move down the catwalk. "Look me up later, Lu. We'll chew over some
old times. I'll buy the beer."

"That don't sound like old times," said Emery. And the great, the granite-faced, the cold-eyed
Admiral B.J. Crawford, Chief of the Bureau of Undersea Exploration and nightmare to a thousand
frightened cadets and j.g.'s, laughed and called him a name, took the impertinence and walked on.

Out again in the central corridor, Dr. Hiller paced in puzzled silence for a time and then said, with
extreme care, "Commander Emery is... uh... very informal, isn't he?"

"What you're asking, ma'am," rasped B.J. Crawford, "is where does a lowly superannuated
Commander get off talking to the high brass that way, isn't it? Or: why isn't the man disciplined for
the way he conducts himself with his superiors? Or: doesn't a man like that eat away at the discipline
of the other men? Is that what you wanted to know?"

Dr. Hiller was obviously not cowed, and perhaps could not be. "Yes," she said.

"All right," said Crawford (approvingly, the Captain thought). "I'll tell you in case you want to put it
in a psychology book some time. I was forty-three years in the Navy before I retired and now three
years in the Bureau, which is as much Navy as I can make it. And I like what they call a taut ship, I
believe rank has its privileges, I believe the man who ranks you is God and the man you rank is dirt,
even by one half a temporary stripe. I believe all that because when an emergency comes up, that's

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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon

the way you've got to have it or a lot of otherwise good men get dead. And the only way you can