"Jack Dann - The Diamond Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)======================
The Diamond Pit by Jack Dann ====================== Copyright (c)2001 by Jack Dann First published in Jubilee by Jack Dann (HarperCollins Australia) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 2001 Fictionwise www.Fictionwise.com Science Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- _Homage to F. Scott -- _ I'd be flyin' to find! If I could only get -- If only I could get -- out'a this jail! -- -- "Rumplemayer's Basement Blues," 1921 -------- *One* It was like being in a storm, except I heard the thunder first. That was the sound of a dozen anti-aircraft guns firing at us from the summit of a sheer butte that rose like a monolith above the cruel curls of the Montana Rockies. The setting sun was wreathed with gauzy clouds, and it tinted the cliffs and crevasses below as pink as stained glass flamingos. We were flying a British Moth with a 60-hp de Havilland motor -- those Brits could certainly make an airplane. The Moth was steady as a table and was Joel's and my favorite for wing walking and stepping off from one plane onto another. I was in the front cockpit this time, just along for the ride. It had been Joel's idea to borrow the boss's beaut and skip out after our last performance to investigate "something goofy" in the mountains near Hades, which was more bare rock than a village set in the saddle between a mountain that looked like a two-knuckled fist and the mountain that was shooting bullets at us. Joel swore and shouted though the communication tube and tried to get us the hell out of there, as bullets tore into the fuselage. Another burst hit the upper wing just above my head, which was where the fuel tank was located. My face was spattered with gasoline and I figured then and there that I had |
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