"Larry Niven - All the Bridges Rusting v1.0 italics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"No."
"I guess not." 'Whyte seemed to shake himself. "'Well, maybe we'll use it some other time. It's a useful technique, shipping fuel in Phoenix hulls. We'll probably need it to explore, say, Barnard's Star, which is moving pretty censored fast with respect to Sol."
"We don't have to tell them they can't do it. Just tell 'em the price tag and let them make up their own minds."
"Listen, I had a hand in launching Lazarus. The launching boosters were fueled by JumpShift units."
"I know."
Whyte, prowling restlessly, was back in front of the launching scene. "I always thought they should have drilled right through the asteroid. Leave the Corliss accelerator open at both ends."
Activity in the sound studio had diminished. Against a white wall men had placed a small table and two chairs, and a battery of teevee cameras and lights were aiming their muzzles into the scene.
Jerryberry touched Whyte's arm. "Let's go sit down over there." Whyte might freeze up if confronted by the cameras too suddenly. Give him a chance to get used to it.
Whyte didn't move. His head was cocked to one side, and his lips moved silently.
"What's the matter?"
Whyte made a shushing motion.
Jerryberry waited.
Presently Whyte looked up. "You'll have to scrap this. How much time have we got?"
"But- An hour. Less. What do you mean, scrap it?"
Whyte smiled. "I just thought of something. Get me to a telephone, will you? Has Gem still got the schematics of the Corliss accelerator?"
An hour to broadcast time, and Jerryberry began to shake.
"Robin, are we going to have a broadcast or not?"
Whyte patted him on the arm. "Count on it."

Gen Jones's big white-on-blue schematic had been thumbtacked to the white wall over the table and chairs. Below it, Jerryberry Jansen leaned back, seemingly relaxed, watching Whyte move about with a piece of chalk.
A thumbtacked blueprint and a piece of chalk. It was slipshod by professional standards. Robin Whyte had not appeared on teevee in a couple of decades. He made professional mistakes: he turned his back on the audience, he covered what he was drawing with the chalk. But he didn't look nervous. He grinned into the cameras as if he could see old friends out there.
"The heart of it is the Corliss accelerator," he said, and with the chalk he drew an arc underneath the tower's launch cradle, through the rock itself. "We excavate here, carve out a space to get the room. Then-" He drew it in.
A JumpShift drop ship receiver cage.
"The rescue ship is self-transmitting, of course. As it leaves the accelerator it transmits back to the launch end. What we have then is an electromagnetic cannon of infinite length. We spin it on its axis so it doesn't get out of alignment. We give the ship an acceleration of one gee for a bit less than two months to boost it to the velocity of Lazarus, then we flick it out to the drop ship.
"This turns out to be a relatively cheap operation," Whyte said. "We could put some extra couches in Phoenix and use that. We could even use the accelerator to boost the drop ship up to speed, but that would take four months, and we'd have to do it now. It would mean building another Corliss accelerator, but-", Whyte grinned into the cameras, "we should have done that anyway, years ago. There's enough traffic to justify it.
"Return voyage is just as simple. After they pick up the crew of Lazarus, they flick to the Pluto drop ship, which is big enough to catch them, then to the Mercury drop ship to lose their potential energy, then back to the Corliss accelerator drop cage. We use the accelerator for another two months to slow it down. The cost of an interstellar drop ship is half a billion new dollars. A new Corliss accelerator would cost us about the same, and we can use it commercially. Total price is half of what Lazarus cost." Whyte put down the chalk and sat.
Jerryberry said, "When can you go ahead with this, Doctor?"
"JumpShift will submit a time-and-costs schedule to the UN Space Authority. I expect it'll go to the world vote."
"Thank you, Doctor Whyte, for . . ." It was a formula. When the cameras were off Jerryberry sagged in his chair. "Now I can say it. Boy, are you out of practice."
"What do you mean? Didn't I get it across?"
"I think you did. I hope so. You smiled a lot too much. On camera that makes you look self-satisfied."
"I know, you told me before," said Whyte. "I couldn't help it. I just felt so good."