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

have it that way in emergencies is to have it that way all the time. Men just don't un-relax and tighten
up fast enough; you got to keep them tight all the time."

Dr. Hiller looked perplexed. "But then Commander EmeryтАФ"

"Lu," said Admiral Crawford, "he unrelaxes fast enough. Statistics being what they are, the law of
averages and all that; and men being what they are, there never has been one like him before and
there never will again. Right, Nelson?"

"Right," chuckled the other.

"I think," said the psychiatrist with a kind of dogged primness, "that you have covered everything
with the possible exception of his effect on the others."

"They love 'im," said the craggy old Admiral astonishingly, "which is one other thing I don't believe
in but I'm glad it happened once so it can never happen again. Somehow or other anyone who ever
runs into Lucius Emery knows he can't act like Lucius Emery unless he is Lucius Emery, and Lu
already got that slot filled. Right, Nelson?"

"Right," said Nelson.

"Right," said Dr. Hiller sharply, and then smiled quite the most engaging smile they had yet shipped
aboard that submarine. The two Admirals shared a chuckle, and Crawford, pre-empting the Captain
and outflanking the Executive Officer, Chip Morton, who panted close by, helped her over the sill
into the magazine.

"Reminds you a little of the Ol' Souf, don't it?", drawled Chip Morton, managing at last to corner the
pretty doctor, and pointing to the close-ranked columns on each outboard bulkhead of the wide
magazine. "I mean those old plantation houses with the rows of columns holding up all that-all you-
all prestige."

"What are they?" she asked, sticking to facts.

"Missile tubes. We could lie on the bottom of the Mindanao Deep, six miles down, and lob one of
those things into orbit, or drop it down the smoke-hole of a Navajo wigwam."

Homing on the warm drone of Chip's voice, Lee Crane came over to interrupt. "Here's something
new," he said, holding out a small curved device. "Magnetic hand primers, to fire these Polaris X's in
case all this spaghettiтАФ" he waved his hand around at the computer systemsтАФ"should get itself
tangled on someone's fork."

"It's so tiny!"

"It provides exactly the right amount of exactly what's needed. 'Course, you have to go outside. You
hang it on the warhead, slap her on the nose, and back off a little. In six seconds, off she goes."


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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon