"Martin H. Greenberg - Space Stations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenberg Martin H)

microphone. "Morning report. Three more days to President Ukukho's
visit."
He gazed with satisfaction at the sentence on the screen as he picked up
his slightly stale bagel covered thinly with cream cheese. A little lox would
have been nice, but lox was hard to come by on United Colonies Space Fort
Jefferson.
Actually, pretty much everything was hard to come by on Space Fort
Jefferson. Tourist-free tourist attractions, as he'd often been told over the
past seven years, rated very low on the Park Service's priority list.
He scowled as he set the bagel back onto its plate. It wasn't a fair
assessment, as he'd argued back for most of those same seven years.
Granted, for much of its four-point-three-year orbit Space Fort Jefferson
was largely deserted, with only its five-ranger crew here to keep the decks
and empty weapons emplacements company.
But for the four months when its elliptical path carried it near the asteroid
belt's Anchorline Archipelago, there was quite a bit of activity on the old
fort. Granted, it wasn't Disney Ceres, but it was still busy enough to keep
the rangers hopping. And even during the long down-time, there was always
a trickle of visitors willing to endure the long and boring trip to set foot on
a piece of genuine, if obscure, history.
But that was going to change now. Earth President Ukukho himself was
on his way; and for the first time in a hundred years, someone in actual
governmental authority was going to visit the station.
And since the public lapped up everything Ukukho said or did, that meant
that billions of people who'd never even heard of Space Fort Jefferson were
going to be brought face-to-face with it.
And what billions of people saw, millions of people went touristing to.
Or so went the theory. Bob took another bite from his bagel, visualizing the
list of improvements and renovations he would be submitting to the Park
Service as soon as the crowds started arriving. At the top of the list would
be to finally finish the renovation of Decks Three to Six that had been
started two years ago and never completed. The mess made the fort's
original gunnery control area nearly impossible for even the rangers to get
to, and visitors always liked seeing control rooms.
There was a gunshot-crackle from the intercom. "Bob?" Kelsey's voice
came distantly.
Bob reached over and flicked the switch. "Yes?"
"Bob?"
Muttering under his breath, Bob flipped the switch off, gave the side of
the box a sharp rap with his knuckles, and flipped the switch back on. On
second thought, maybe it would be the intercom that would head the
replacement list. "Yes?"
"Got a ship coming in to dock," Kelsey reported.
"The GenTronic Twelve?" Bob asked, frowning. The yacht had been on
their scopes for the past thirty-two hours, bringing in the latest batch of
off-season tourists. But last he'd checked, it shouldn't be here nearly this
soon.
"No, they're still three and a half hours out," Kelsey confirmed. "This is a
Fafnir Four."
Bob felt his eyebrows lifting. "A Fafnir Four?"