"Murray Leinster - The Duplicators" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

that he must be off the beam. There was no such treasure in the galaxy. But he'd been on Sord Three, and h«'d had some
money—enough to buy the Glamorgan and ber cargo—and he was trying to get back. He'd cut Link
in out of necessity, because the Glamorgan had to get off Trent when she did, or not get off at all. So Thistlethwaite
was not a crackpot. But an eccentric, that he was!
Fuming but resolute, the little man tried valiantly to make the ship hold together until his project was completed.
From the beginning four compartments besides the spaceboat blister were sealed off because they couldn't be made
airtight. A fifth compartment lost half a pound of air every hour on the hour. Thistlethwaite labored over it, daubing
extinguisher-foam on joints and cracks until he found where the foam vanished first. Then he lavishly applied
sealing-compound. This was not the act of a crackpot who only wants to be admired. It was consistent with a far-out
mentality which would run the wildest of risks to carry out a purpose. Moreover, when after days of labor he still
couldn't bring the air loss down below half a pound a day, he sealed off that compartment too. The Glamorgan had
been a tub to begin with. Now she displayed characteristics to make a reasonably patient man break down and cry.
Link offered to help in the sealing-off process. Thistlethwaite snapped at him.
"You tend to your knitting and I'll tend to mine," he said acidly. "You're so smart at workin' out things I want to keep
to myself."
"I only found out where we're going," said Link. "I didn't find out why."
*To get rich," snapped Thistlethwaite. That's why! I want to get rich! I spent my life bein' poor. Now I want to get
kowtowed to! My first partner got money and he couldn't wait to enjoy it. I've waited. I'm not telling anybody
anything! I know what I'm goin" to do. I got a talent for business. I never had a chance to use it. No capital. Now I'm
goiag to get rich and do things like I always wanted to do."
Link asked more questions and the little man turned waspishly upon him.
"That's my business, like runnin' this ship to where we're goin' is yours! You leave me be! I'm not riskin' you knowin'
what I know. I'm not takin' the chance of you figurin' you'll do better cheating me than playin' fair."
This was shrewdness, after a fashion. There are plenty of men who quite simply and naturally believe that the way to
profit in any enterprise is to double-cross their associates. The whiskery man had evidently met them. He wasn't sure
Link wasn't one of them. He kept his mouth shut.
"Eventually," said Link, "I'm going to have to come out of overdrive to check my course. Is that all right with you?"
"That's your business!" rasped Thistlethwaite. "You tend to your business and I'll tend to mine!"
He disappeared, prowling around the ship, checking the air pressure, spending long periods in the engine room and
not unfrequently coming silently and secretly up the stairway to the control room to regard Link with inveterate
suspicion.
It annoyed Link. So when he determined that he should break out of overdrive to verify his position—a dubious
business considering the limits of his knowledge—he did not notify Thistlethwaite. He simply broke out of
overdrive.
There should have been merely an instant of intolerable vertigo and of intense nausea, and then the sensation of a
spiral fall toward infinity, but nothing more. Those sensations occurred. But as they began there was also a wild,
rasping rear in the engine room. Lights dimmed. Thistlethwaite bowled with fury and flung himself down into an
inferno of Mae arcs and stinking scorched insulation. In that incredible •ightmare-like atmosphere he hit something
with a stick. He polled violently on a rope. He spun a wheel rapidly. And Ibe arcs died. The ship's ancient air system
began to struggle with the smoke and smells.
It took him two days to make repairs, during which he did
not address one syllable to Link. But Link was busy anyhow. He was taking observations and checking the process with the
Practical Astrogator as he went along. Then he used the computer to make his observations mean something. He faithfully
wrote all these exercises in the ship's log. It helped to pass the time. But when determination of the ship's position by three
different methods gave the same result, he arrived at the astonishing conclusion that the Glamorgan was actually on course.
He was composing a tribute to himself for the feat when Thistlethwaite came bristling into the control room.
"I fixed what you messed up," he said bitterly. "We can go on now. But next time you do something, don't do it till you ask
me, and I'll fix it so you can. You could've wrecked us."
Link opened his mouth to ask what could be a more complete wreck than the Glamorgan right now, but he refrained. He
arranged for Thistlethwaite to go down into the engine room. He shouted down the stairways. Thistlethwaite bellowed a