"Murray Leinster - Med Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

"Getting in trouble," said Calhoun briefly.
"Med Ship!" the voice rasped. "Keep out of the way of our missile! It's a megaton
bomb!"
Calhoun said irrelevantly: "Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a
bloody nose." He added, "I know what it is."
Calhoun aimed his ship. He knew the capacities of his ship as only a man who'd
handled one for a long time could. He knew quite exactly what it could do.
The rocket from remoteness—the megaton-bomb missile—came smoking furiously
from the stars. Calhoun seemed to throw his ship into a collision course.
The rocket swerved to avoid him, though guided from many thousands of miles away.
There was a trivial time-lag between the time its scanners picked up a picture and
transmitted it, and the controlling impulse reached the missile in response. Calhoun
counted on that. But he wasn't trying for a collision. He was forcing evasive action.
He secured it. The rocket slanted itself to dart aside. Calhoun threw the Med Ship into
a flip-flop and slashed the missile with his own ship's rocket flame. . . .
 MED SHIP MAN

I
Calhoun regarded the communicator with something like exasperation as his taped
voice repeated a standard approach-call for the twentieth time. But no answer came,
which had become irritating a long time ago. This was a new Med Service sector for
Calhoun. He'd been assigned to another man's tour of duty because the other man had
been taken down with romance. He'd gotten married, which ruled him out for Med Ship
duty. So now Calhoun listened to his own voice endlessly repeating a call that should
have been answered immediately.
Murgatroyd the tormal watched with beady, interested eyes. The planet Maya lay off
to port of the Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty. Its almost-circular disk showed full-size on a
vision-screen beside the ship's control-board. There was an ice-cap in view. There were
continents. There were seas. The cloud-system of a considerable cyclonic disturbance
could be noted off at one side, and the continents looked reasonably as they should, and
the seas were of that muddy, indescribable tint which indicates deep water.
Calhoun's own voice, taped half an hour earlier, sounded in a speaker as it went again
to the communicator and then to the extremely visible world a hundred thousand miles
away.
"Calling ground," said Calhoun's recorded voice. "Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty
calling ground to report arrival and ask coordinates for landing. Our mass is fifty
standard tons. Repeat, five-oh tons. Purpose of landing, planetary health inspection."
The recorded voice stopped. There was silence except for those also-taped random
noises which kept the inside of the ship from feeling like the inside of a tomb.
Murgatroyd said:
"Chee?"
Calhoun said ironically:
"Undoubtedly, Murgatroyd! Undoubtedly! Whoever's on duty at the spaceport
stepped out for a moment, or dropped dead, or did something equally inconvenient. We
have to wait until he gets back or somebody else takes over!"
Murgatroyd said "Chee!" again and began to lick his whiskers. He knew that when
Calhoun called on the communicator, another human voice should reply. Then there
should be conversation, and shortly the force-fields of a landing-grid should take hold of
the Med Ship and draw it planetward. In time it ought to touch ground in a space-port
with a gigantic, silvery landing-grid rising skyward all about it. Then there should be