"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Probationers (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Mirza-Charlie. The hotel, suite three hundred and six.

Yura was killing time. In a few hours he covered almost the entire
city. He really enjoyed walking around unfamiliar cities and find out what
there is. In Mirza-Charlie there was EACS. No one was allowed under the
giant transparent dome but now Yura knew that EACS - is the Electronic
Administration and Control System, the electronic brain of the cosmodrome.
Walking north from EACS, you would get to a large park with an open sky
cinema, two shooting galleries, a big stadium, the ride "Man inside a
rocket", music cabins, swings, dancing areas and a great clear lake, around
which araucarias and pyramid poplars grew and in which Yura enjoyed a swim.
On the southern outskirts of the city Yura discovered a low red building,
immediately past which the desert began. Next to the building were parked a
few red squarish atomocars and a blue policeman was walking around with a
gun. The policeman announced to Yura that the red building is the prison and
that the Russian lad shouldn't go there. To the west of EACS lay the
residential suburbs. There were lots of small and large, pretty and not so
pretty houses. The streets were narrow, unsealed. Living there must have
been, as it looked, not bad at all - cool, shady and close to the centre.
Yura really liked the city library building but did not go inside. On the
western city border the administrative buildings were situated, and behind
them the industrial area began, a huge territory occupied by warehouses.
The warehouses were endlessly long, grey-coloured, made from corrugated
plastic, with giant white numbers painted on the walls. Here Yura discovered
such an abundance of trucks and cargo helicopters that he had never seen in
his life. His ears were becoming blocked from the continuous steady hum of
engines. Yura had barely walked ten paces, when behind him a siren wailed
nastily and he jumped to the side, to some wall, but then the wall opened
and through the gates, as wide as the Arch of Triumph, right towards Yura,
crawled a huge red and white beast on wheels the size of two human heights,
and from the two-storey height the driver wearing a beanie shouted at Yura.
The humongous truck slowly reversed in a narrow passage between the
warehouses and right behind it another one was crawling out already, and a
third one following the second. Yura carefully manoeuvred along the walls,
radiating heat, deafened by the roar, the rumbling and heavy clink of unseen
mechanisms.
Then he saw a low platform, onto which familiar cylindrical containers
with vacuum welding mix were being loaded. He walked closer, and smiling
cheerfully, stood next to the man conducting the loading with the help of a
remote control on his neck. He stood and watched for some time as the arms
of the crane accurately placed the packed container stacks on top of each
other. Then he said knowingly:
- No, this won't do.
- What won't do? - asked the man with interest and looked at Yura.
- This very container won't do.
- Why?
- You can see that. The valve is crooked.
The man wavered for a few seconds.
- It's nothing, - he said. - They will work it out there.