"Robert A. Heinlein - The Green Hills of Earth (Collected Stor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

boost. Now we use them wherever a controlled push is needed, say to get a
truck out of the mud on a dam job. We mounted four thousand. of them
around the frame of the living quarters, each one placed just so. They were
wired up and ready to fire when Tiny came to me looking worried. "Dad," he
said, "let's drop everything and finish compartment D-ll3."
"Okay," I said. D-l13 was in the non-spin part.
"Rig an air lock and stock it with two weeks supplies."
"That'll change your mass distribution for spin," I suggested.
"I'll refigure it next dark period. Then we'll shift jatos."
When Dalrymple heard about it he came charging around. It meant a
delay in making rental space available. "What's the idea?"
Tiny stared at him. They had been cooler than ordinary lately;
Dalrymple had been finding excuses to seek out Miss Gloria. He had to pass
through Tiny's office to reach her temporary room, and Tiny had finally told
him to get out and stay out. "The idea," Tiny said slowly, "is to have a pup
tent in case the house burns."
"What do you mean?"
"Suppose we fire up the jatos and the structure cracks? Want to hang
around in a space suit until a ship happens by?"
6
 "That's silly. The stresses have been calculated."
"That's what the man said when the bridge fell. We'll do it my way."
Dalrymple stormed off.
Tiny's efforts to keep Gloria fenced up were sort of pitiful. In the first
place, the radio tech's biggest job was repairing suit walkie-talkies, done on
watch. A rash of such troubles broke out-on her shift. I made some shift
transfers and docked a few for costs, too; it's not proper maintenance when a
man deliberately busts his aerial.
There were other symptoms. It became stylish to shave. Men started
wearing shirts around quarters and bathing increased to where I thought I
would have to rig another water still.
Came the shift when D-l13 was ready and the jatos readjusted. I don't
mind saying I was nervous. All hands were ordered out of the quarters and
into suits. They perched around the girders and waited.
Men in space suits all look alike; we used numbers and colored
armbands. Supervisors had two antennas, one for a gang frequency, one for
the supervisors' circuit. With Tiny and me the second antenna hooked back
through the radio shack and to all the gang frequencies-a broadcast.
The supervisors had reported their men clear of the fireworks and I was
about to give Tiny the word, when this figure came climbing through the
girders, inside the danger zone. No safety line. No armband. One antenna.
Miss Gloria, of course. Tiny hauled her out of the blast zone, and
anchored her with his own safety line. I heard his voice, harsh in my helmet:
"Who do you think you are? A sidewalk superintendent?"
And her voice: "What do you expect me to do? Go park on, a star?"
"I told you to stay away from the job. If you can't obey orders, I'll lock
you up."
I reached him, switched off my radio and touched helmet. "Boss! Boss!"
I said. "You're broadcasting!"
"Oh-" he says, switches off, and touches helmets with her. We could