"David Weber - In the Navy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

less. But the simple fact is that there's no one else in Grantville who'd even know where to begin with a
project like this one."
"Well, that's certainly a refreshing admission." Simpson's lips twitched in what, in another man, might
have been called a ghost of a smile, but there was very little humor in his eyes. "I suppose I should be
flattered that you're willing to grant my expertise in any field."
Mike felt his temper try to flare. He was, by nature, a passionate man, and learning the
self-discipline required to control those passionsтАФand his temperтАФhad not come easily to him. But it
was a lesson he'd mastered long ago, and although Simpson made it more difficult than most, he wasn't
about to forget it now.
"We can sit here pissing in each other's soup all afternoon, if you like," he said instead, throwing the
crudity deliberately into the midst of the conversation. "Or we can deal with the reason I came over.
Which would you prefer?"
Something flickered in Simpson's eyes. For a moment, Mike thought it was the other man's temper.
Then he realized it had been something else. A moment of . . . recognition, perhaps. Or possibly simply
an awareness that Mike had no intention of rising to his jibes and giving him the satisfaction of losing his
temper.
"Tell me exactly what you have in mind," the ex-CEO said after only the briefest pause.
"It's simple enough." Mike leaned forward in his chair, planting his forearms on the table. "Eddie
Cantrell came to see me with the initial proposal. He brought along a stack of reference books, and it
turns out that he's got an entire stash of other books we never guessed he had. I should've made a point
of going over there and going through the Four Musketeers' library myself. Everybody in town's known
for years that the four of them were absolutely buggy where military history and war games were
concerned."
He shook his head, eyes momentarily unfocused as he considered the treasure trove he and Frank
Jackson had discovered in Eddie and Larry Wild's bookshelves.
"Anyway," he continued briskly, "Eddie has decided that we need a U.S. Navy, and he set out
single-handedly to do something about it. Which is how he came up with this."
Mike took a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across the table. Simpson's
eyes flicked to it in a casual, almost dismissive glance. Then they snapped back, and he smoothed the
sketch's creases as he frowned down at it.
"Cantrell did this?"
"Yeah. He took a course in drafting over at the high school a couple of years ago. Not," Mike
added dryly, "that it really prepared him for a career as a maritime engineer."
"I'd say that's a bit of an understatement." Simpson's attention was on the figures listed in the data
block in the upper left corner of Eddie's sketch, and he seemed momentarily to have forgotten his
obvious dislike for the man across the table from him. He studied the numbers for several seconds, then
snorted in something very like amusement.
"This displacement estimate of his has got to be way low," he said. "And even if it weren't, there's
no way he's going to get by with a six-foot draft!" He shook his head. "I'd have to do some volume
calculations to be certain, but even at his estimated tonnage, this thing is going to draw ten or twelve feet,
minimum, and that's too deep for riverine conditions."
Mike chuckled, and Simpson looked quickly up from the sketch.
"I said something funny?" he inquired in a voice which had suddenly remembered its frost.
 "No, not really. But you did just demonstrate exactly why I'm sitting here this morning. Do you
really think that anyone else in GrantvilleтАФor anywhere else in seventeenth-century Europe, for that
matter!тАФcould rattle off what you just did?"
"I suppose not," Simpson said after a moment. "Of course, you realize that it's been the better part
of twenty years since I did any hands-on hardware work at all."
"Maybe so, but at least you did some once upon a time. And didn't your company have a piece of
the Navy's shipbuilding program?"