"C M Kornbluth - The Adventurer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

the teck.

"Seven hours, sir."

"The interceptors at Idlewild alerted?"

"Yessir."

Arris turned on a phone that connected with Interception. The boy at Interception knew the face that
appeared on its screen, and was already capped with a crash helmet.

"Go ahead and take him, Efrid," said the wing commander.

"Yessir!" and a punctilious salute, the boy's pleasure plain at being known by name and a great deal
more at being on the way to a fight that might be first-class.



Arris cut him off before the boy could detect a smile that was forming on his face. He turned from the
pale lunar glow of the sixty-incher to enjoy it. Those kids-when every meteor was an invading
dreadnaught, when every ragged scouting ship from the rebels was an armada!

He watched Efrid's squadron soar off on the screen and then he retreated to a darker corner. This was
his post until the meteor or scout or whatever it was got taken care of. Evan joined him, and they silently
studied the smooth, disciplined functioning of the plot room, Arris with satisfaction and Evan doubtless
with the same. The aide broke silence, asking:

"Do you suppose it's a Frontier ship, sir?" He caught the wing commander's look and hastily corrected
himself: "I mean rebel ship, sir, of cQurse."

"Then you should have said so. Is that what the junior officers generally call those scoundrels?"

Evan conscientiously cast his mind back over the Tast few junior messes and reported unhappily: "I'm
afraid we do, sir. We seem to have got into the habit."

"I shall write a memorandum about it. How do you account for that very peculiar habit?"

"Well, sir, they do have something like a fleet, and they did take over the Regulus Cluster, didn't they?"

What had got into this incredible fellow, Arris wondered in amazement. Why, the thing was self-evident!
They had a few ships-accounts differed as to how many-and they had, doubtless by raw sedition, taken
over some systems temporarily.

He turned from his aide, who sensibly became interested in a screen and left with a murmured excuse to
study it very closely.

The brigands had certainly knocked together some ramshackle league or other, but-The wing
commander wondered briefly if it could last, shut the horrid thought from his head, and set himself to
composing mentally a stiff memorandum that would be posted in the junior officer's mess and put an end
to this absurd talk.