"Howard Waldrop - Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

His own old man, after some vacillation, jumped on the Preparedness
band-wagon and was out with Hap Arnold, beefing up the army air corps.
You wouldnтАЩt have known thereтАЩd just been a Depression.
Uncle Robert finally got something right. When he was eight, Charles Jr.
watched a rocket go up and actually get out of sight before it exploded. He, Uncle
Robert, and everybody else ran back inside the small blockhouse while it rained
metal for a couple of minutes.
Of course his father taught him how to fly, but since heтАЩd been driving the
converted mail van and rocket trailer from the shed three miles out to the range since
he was six (heтАЩd put blocks on the brakes and accelerator and stood on a box to see
out the windshield), he thought flying was a lot like driving a car, only the road was
bigger.
One time he and his father talked about it. тАЬI like flying too, I guess,тАЭ said
Charles Jr. тАЬBut the airтАЩs so thick. ThatтАЩs for sissies.тАЭ
тАЬYouтАЩll think sissy when you pull three Gs on an inside turn sometime,тАЭ said
the Lone Eagle.
He spent most of his time with his aunt and uncle, and by the time he was ten
he was working for Uncle Robert after school and full time in the summers, at
whatever needed to be done.
Uncle Robert was getting olderтАФheтАЩd always looked old with his bald head
and mustache, but now his head was wrinkled and the mustache was gray and white
like a dollop of cream cheese across his lip.
The war had already started in Europe. One day a shady character in a cheap
suit it brought in some plans and left.
The whole crew gathered around. Uncle Robert tapped the blueprints.
тАЬThatтАЩs what the Germans are working on.тАЭ he said. тАЬTheyтАЩre not very serious yet,
but they will be. TheyтАЩre on the right track, but theyтАЩre spending most of their time
trying to get a good centrifugal pump, and havenтАЩt thought about regenerative
cooling yet. On the other hand, look at this. Graphite vanes in the exhaust, and I
assume if itтАЩs ballistic theyтАЩll be set beforehand; if itтАЩs guidable, theyтАЩll have to make
room for steering mechanisms and radio controls.тАЭ
He looked at all of them. тАЬThe army and air corps have their thumbs up their
wazoos right now, so weтАЩll have to do it ourselves on the Smithsonian and
Gug-genheim money. I figure the Nazis are six months behind us in some things, a
couple of years ahead in others.тАЭ
 They went to work and they worked hard, especially after the U.S. got in the
war when the Japanese bombed the Phillipines.
It wasnтАЩt easy, but they did it by the middle of 1942. They fired it off. It went
143 miles and punched a thirty-foot hole in the desert even without a warhead.
They showed it to the air corps.
World War II was over late in 1944, just after Charles Jr. turned 14.


It was a bright and sunny day in the winter of 1945. He and Uncle Robert were
looking at one of the German A-4s that had been lying around everywhere in Europe
when the war ended and then shipped to America, along with their sci-entists. The
army had given Goddard five or six to play with.
Uncle Robert had been sick the year before, recurrence of the TB of his
youth, but had gotten better. Now he seemed to have some of the old spark back.
He looked at the pumps, the servo-mechanisms. He looked in the empty warhead