"Sean McMullen - The Pharaoh's Airship" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

There were three photographs beside the aircraft. In the first, a small boy wearing thick glasses stood
beside his creation. His face was a study in determination, mixed with nervousness. In the next, the
aircraft was a few feet above the ground. The last showed a scattering of wreckage, with an ambulance
and police car in the background.
"He took off from the street in front of his home. The motor's coil burned out, the craft stalled, and you
can see the results. A neighbour took these pictures.
"Fantastic," I said, "but most kids just build models if they're interested in flight. Why did he go to so
much trouble? Why do something so dangerous?"
"Oh, just some rivalry at school. A couple of kids were talking about becoming pilots when they grew
up, and Stephen said that he wanted to fly as well. They began teasing him, and told him that nobody as
short-sighted as he was could ever get a pilot's licence.
"It's funny, you know, but most people think of Stephen as a sort of absent-minded little whiz kid. He
was actually stubborn, bad-tempered, resourceful, and very, very proud. He shouted that he would pilot
a plane before they could even drive a car, then went home and started to build this. He was right, too."
I looked at the last photograph again. "Was he hurt?" I asked. "He seems to have come down pretty
hard."
"Rather badly," said the sergeant, shaking his head. "When he got out of hospital we agreed to forget
the whole thing if his mother kept him locked out of the tool shed. He wore that for a year or so, then
decided he wasn't going to be pushed around. He ran away."
"All kids do that," said Taylor, "I used to run away to Granny's nearly every month."
"Little Steve was not just any kid," he replied, walking along to the next exhibit. It was a display of
newspaper clippings. "It was over a year before we found him, in a city 2000 miles away. He had
travelled by hiding on trains and big rigs, and earned money by selling newspapers, sweeping, and other
odd jobs. Talk about resourceful: he was renting a cheap room, and had $500 in the bank when we
found him. The kid was barely 13!"
We examined the clippings and photographs. A picture was emerging of Stephen's character, but one
that was not at all encouraging for us. He must have had helpers: find his helpers, they had told us in the
Pentagon. It was becoming clear, however, that this short-sighted little boy had enough resourcefulness
and mechanical skills for a dozen normal people. He could have built the Pharaoh with no help at all.
The last exhibit was a deck chair. Floating above it was a cluster of weather sonde balloons attached
by thin wires. It rested on a wicker frame which enclosed a gimbaled chainsaw engine driving a small
rotor. Deflectors cancelled the torque.
"He called it the Pharaoh's Chariot," said Sergeant Powell. "It can't leave the ground until the motor is
started, as it needs a small downward thrust to rise. The deckchair was from his mother's sunroom, the
chainsaw engine from a neighbour's junkpile."
It was a masterpiece of safety design, and Stephen had clearly been influenced by his earlier accident.
It could not crash! If the motor failed, the craft drifted down slowly. If some balloons burst as well, he
could reduce weight by dropping the motor and wicker frame, and still descend slowly. To steer he tilted
the rotor slightly, to descend he just throttled back. His main expense had probably been the balloons
and hydrogen.
"He was 14 when he built this," explained the sergeant. "His school was running some sort of science
fair, and the kids were told to bring along some special project. This was Stephen's contribution, and he
actually flew it to school."
He pointed to a photograph that had been taken on the day. The Pharaoh's Chariot was descending
towards the school's football field, while a police helicopter hovered in the background.
"He seems to have a police escort," Taylor observed.
"He sure did, and this time he was in real trouble. He had flown through the approach path to Eagle
Farm airport, and he was charged with nine counts involving the Air Navigation Act. He was given a
good behaviour bond, and I was one of the officers who counselled him. He behaved himself for the next
five years, so we must have done some good."