"Ken Rand - Bad News from Orbit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ken)

I sat silent, awed by—Mount Horiuchi, as I found myself editing tape in my head already. Mount
Horiuchi. My editor would love it.

He spoke. “We ain't live, are we?"

“Not from inside a private business establishment. That would violate ICC regs. I am obliged to tell you
that I am recording this for broadcast at a later—”

“I picked you cause you work for TSIN."

And my brilliant response: “Huh?” We'd have to edit audio at the desk. Still, I felt myself tingle. Horiuchi
had chosen TransSystem Info?

“Why?"

“My little girl—Molly's her name—she likes watching your Capt. Whistler Kid's Hour on the holly.” He
spoke as he'd done briefly at the conference, a bit breathy and high-pitched, with an odd twang,
dropping ‘g's’ from his gerunds, an Oort accent.

For whatever reason, Horiuchi's military handlers tried to keep their pet hero from saying more than a
few phrases at the conference. Maybe they feared he'd reveal state secrets. Who knows how the military
mind functions? Of course, this tantalized us newsies to hear more, hence my presence in the Wafaerer's
to accomplish just that.

“You sought me out because—"

“I don't watch holly myself, mind. But my girl dotes on your show, so who else to blab to? I know one
of you newsies is going to corral me by and by, before my unit outships, so I reckoned my best bet was
to nail you first. Slinky only charged me a twenty to find you."

“Well,” I ahemed and spoke for the record, “on behalf of TSIN, I'm sincerely—"

“You want to know how I lost me ear is what."

Hell no. I want to know how you won the war. That's what I thought, not what I said. “I hear the
rebels tortured you—"

“So HQ says and so that's what the history books'll say. But I'm figuring to tell the truth and nothing but,
HQ be deviled if they don't like it. So listen and don't interrupt, cause I'm only telling it once, you savvy?"

I nodded and wished I had a beer, something to wet my dry throat. I listened and Horiuchi talked.

****

This is the part everybody knows, the history, but Horiuchi told me anyway, and I didn't interrupt him.
 The tunnels on Spiratz are a maze, he said. Thousands of kilometers of passageways, cavernous rooms
and interlocking pits, vaults, and warrens had been dug deep into the planetoid's hard rock to extract the
aulerite ore prized by the Berenson Corp. Shipbuilding Division in the Aragon star system, a short jump
from Spiratz. The ore is a key element in the metallic-ceramic alloy used to build null-transit ship hulls.
Interstellar commerce would be impossible without it.