"Bruce Sterling - Think of the Prestige (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

property. In pursuit of space research, Bull had invented techniques
that lent much greater range and accuracy to conventional artillery
rounds. With Bull's ammunition, for instance, US Naval destroyers
would be able to cruise miles off the shore of North Vietnam,
destroying the best Russian-made shore batteries without any fear of
artillery retaliation. Bull's Space Research Corporation was
manufacturing the necessary long-range shells in Canada, but his lack
of American citizenship was a hindrance in the Pentagon arms trade.

Such was Dr. Bull's perceived strategic importance that this
hindrance was neatly avoided; with the sponsorship of Senator Barry
Goldwater, Bull became an American citizen by act of Congress. This
procedure was a rare honor, previously reserved only for Winston
Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette.

Despite this Senatorial fiat, however, the Navy arms deal
eventually fell through. But although the US Navy scorned Dr. Bull's
wares, others were not so short-sighted. Bull's extended-range
ammunition, and the murderously brilliant cannon that he designed to
fire it, found ready markets in Egypt, Israel, Holland, Italy, Britain,
Canada, Venezuela, Chile, Thailand, Iran, South Africa, Austria and
Somalia.

Dr. Bull created a strange private reserve on the Canadian-
American border; a private arms manufactury with its own US and
Canadian customs units. This arrangement was very useful, since the
arms-export laws of the two countries differed, and SRC's military
products could be shipped-out over either national border at will. In
this distant enclave on the rural northern border of Vermont, the
arms genius built his own artillery range, his own telemetry towers
and launch-control buildings, his own radar tracking station,
workshops, and machine shops. At its height, the Space Research
Corporation employed over three hundred people at this site, and
boasted some $15 million worth of advanced equipment.

The downfall of HARP had left Bull disgusted with the
government-supported military-scientific establishment. He referred
to government researchers as "clowns" and "cocktail scientists," and
decided that his own future must lay in the vigorous world of free
enterprise. Instead of exploring the upper atmosphere, Bull

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dedicated his ready intelligence to the refining of lethal munitions.
Bull would not sell to the Soviets or their client states, whom he
loathed; but he would sell to most anyone else. Bull's cannon are
credited with being of great help to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA war in
Angola; they were also extensively used by both sides in the Iran-Iraq
war.