"Ben Bova - The Kinsman Saga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

The helmet on Kinsman's head weighed two million
pounds. He made a grunting noise that was supposed to be a
cool "Okay."

And then they were skimming across the empty desert,
engines howling, rocks and bushes nothing more than a
speeding blur whizzing past. Kinsman took a deep exhilarat-
ing breath. The plane shook and bucked as if eager to return

to the thinner, clearer air where it had been designed to fly.

He thought he saw some buildings in the blur of hills off
to his left, but before he could speak into his radio mike the
pilot blurted;

"Whoops! Highway!"

The control column between Kinsman's knees yanked
back toward his crotch. The plane stood on its tail, afterburn-
ers screaming, and a microsecond's flicker of a huge tractor-
trailer rig zipped past the corner of his eye. The suit squeezed
at his middle again and he felt himself pressing into the
contoured seat with the weight of an anvil on his chest.

They leveled off at last and Kinsman sucked in a great
sighing gulp of oxygen.

"Damned sun glare does that sometimes," the pilot was
saying, sounding half annoyed and half apologetic. "Damned
desert looks clear but there's a truck doodling along the
highway, hidden in the glare."

Kinsman found his voice. "That was a helluva ride."

The pilot chuckled. "I'll bet there's one damned rattled
trucker down there. He's probably on his little ol' CB
reporting a flying saucer attack."

They headed westward again, toward the setting sun.
The pilot let Kinsman take the controls for a while as they
climbed to cross the approaching Sierras. The rugged moun-
tain crests were still capped with snow, bluish and cold. Like
the wall of the Rockies that loomed over the Academy,
Kinsman thought.

"You got a nice steady touch, kid. Make a good pilot."

"Thanks. I used to fly my father's Cessna. Even the
Learjet, once."