The Makeshift Rocket Read Online Free PDF

voice. ‘The score, you unevaluated partial derivative!’
    McConnell ripped out his wallet, flung a five-pound note blindly on the floor, and went up the stairs three at a time. The door banged in his wake.

CHAPTER THREE
    The sun was low when Knud Axel Syrup pedaled a slightly erratic course over the spaceport concrete. He had given the Alt Heidelberg several hours’ worth of his business: partly because there was nothing else to do but work his way down the beer list, and partly because Miss Emily Croft – once her tears were dried – was pleasant company, even for a staid old married man from Simmerboelle. Not that he cared to listen to her exposition of Duncanite principles, but he had prevailed on her to demonstrate some classical dances. And she had been a sight worth watching, once he overcame his natural disappointment at learning that classical dance included neither bumps nor grinds, and found how to ignore Sarmishkidu’s lyre and syrinx accompaniment.
    ‘Du skal faa min sofacykel naar jeg doer
—’ sang Herr Syrup mournfully.
    ‘An’ what might that mean?’ asked the green-clad guard posted beneath the
Mercury Girl
.
    ‘You shall have my old bicycle ven I die
,’ translated Herr Syrup, always willing to oblige.
    ‘You shall have my old bicycle ven I die,

For de final kilometer
Goes on tandem vif’ St. Peter
.
You shall have my old bicycle ven’ I die
.’
    ‘Oh, said the guard, rather coldly.
    Herr Syrup leaned his vehicle against the berth. ‘Dat is amore modern verse,’ he explained. ‘De orig’inal song goes back to de T’irty Years’ Var.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Gustavus Adolphus’ troops ban singing it as—’ Something told Herr Syrup that his little venture into historical scholarship was not finding a very appreciative audience. He focused, with some slight difficulty, on the battered hull looming above him. ‘Vy is dere no lights?’ he asked. ‘Is all de crew in town?’
    ‘I don’t know what,’ confessed the guard. His manner thawed; he brought up his rifle and began picking his teeth with the bayonet. ‘’T was a quare thing, begorra. Your skipper, the small wan in the dishcloth hat, was argyfyin’ half the day wi’ General O’Toole. At last he was all but thrown out of headquarters an’ came back here. He found our boys just at the point of removin’ the ship’s radio. Well, now, sir, ye can see how we could not let ye live aboard your ship an’ not see-questrate the apparatus by which ye might call New Winchester an’ bring the King’s bloody soldiers down on our heads. But no, that poor little dark sad man could not be reas’nable, he began whoopin’ and screamin’ for all his crew, an’ off he rushed at the head of ’em. Now I ask ye, sir, is that any way to—’
    Knud Axel Syrup scowled, fished out his pipe, and tamped it full with a calloused thumb. One could not deny, he thought, Captain Radhakrishnan was normally the mildest of human creatures; but he had his moments. He superheated, yes, that was what he did, he superheated without showing a sign, and then all at once some crucial thing happened and he flashed off in live steam and what resulted thereafter, that was only known to God and also the Lord.
    ‘Heigh-ho,’ sighed the engineer. ‘Maybe someone like me vat is not so excited should go see if dere is any trouble.’
    He lit his pipe, stuck it under his mustache, and climbed back onto his bicycle. Four roads led out of the spaceport, but one was toward town – so, which of three? – wait a minute. The crew would presumably not have stampeded quite at random. They would have intended to do something. What? Well, what would send the whole Shamrock League adventure downward and home? Sabotage of their new drive unit. And the asteroid’s geegee installations lay down
that
road.
    Herr Syrup pedaled quickly off. Twilight fell as he crossed the Cotswold Mountains, all of 500 meters high, and the gloom in Sherwood Forest was lightened only by his