"Harry Harrison - A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

most powerful engine in the world. Despite the urgency of his mission
Drigg slowed, as did all the other passengers, unable calmly to pass the
gleaming length of her.

Black driving wheels as tall as his head, drive rods thicker than his legs
that emerged from swollen cylinders leaking white plumes of steam from
their exhausts. She was a little travel-stained about her lower works but all
her outer skin shone with the seam-less, imprisoned-sunlight glow of gold,
fourteen-karat gold plating, a king’s ransom on a machine this size.

But it wasn’t the gold the soldiers were here to guard, though that was
almost reason enough, but the pro-pulsive mechanism hidden within that
smooth, unbroken, smoke--stackless shell. An atomic reactor, the
government said, and little else, and kept its counsel. And guarded its
engine. Any of the states of Ger-many would give a year’s income for this
secret while spies had already been captured who, it was rumored, were in
the employ of the King of France. The soldiers sternly eyed the passersby
and Drigg hurried on.

The works offices were upstairs in the station building and a lift carried
him swiftly to the fourth floor. He was reaching for the door to the
ex-ecutive suite when it opened and a man emerged, a navvy from the look
of him, for who else but a railway navvy would wear such knee-high
hobnailed boots along with green corduroy trousers? His shirt was heavy
canvas and over it he wore a grim but still rainbow waistcoat, while
around his pillar-like neck was wrapped an even gaudier handker-chief.
He held the door but barred Drigg’s way, looking at him closely with his
pale blue eyes which were startlingly clear in the tanned nut-brown of his
face.

“You’re Mr. Drigg, aren’t you, sir?” he asked before the other could
protest. “I saw you here when they cut’t‘tape and at other official
func-tions of t’line.”

“If you please.”

The thick-chewed arm still pre-vented his entrance and there seemed
little he could do to move it.

“You wouldn’t know me, but I’m Fighting Jack, Captain Washington’s
head ganger, and if it’s the captain you want’t‘see he’s not here.”

“I do want to see him and it is a matter of some urgency.”

“That’ll be tonight then, after shift. Captain’s up’t‘the face. No vis-itors.
If you’ve messages in that bag, I’ll bring ’em up for you.”

“Impossible, I must deliver this in person.” Drigg took a key from his
waistcoat pocket and turned it in the lock of the portfolio then reached
in-side. There was a single linen en-velope there and he withdrew it just