"Phillip Francis Nowlan - Buck Rogers 01 - Armageddon 2419" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nowlan Philip Francis)

Wilma had a reputation for being cold toward the opposite sex, and so others misinterpreted her
attitude, much to their own delight. Wilma and I, however, ignored this as much as we could.
 A HAN AIR RAID

There was a girl in Wilma's camp named Gerdi Mann, with whom Bill Hearn was desperately in love,
and the four of us used to go around a lot together. Gerdi was a disnct type. Whereas Wilma had the
usual dark brown hair and hazel eyes that marked nearly every member of the comty, Gerdi had red
hair, blue eyes and very fair skin. She was a throwback in physical appearance to a certain 20th
Century type which I have found very rare among modern Americans. The four of us were engaged
one day in a discussion of this very point, when I obtained my first experience of a Han air raid.
We were sitting high on the side of a hill overlooking the valley that teemed with human activity,
invisible beneath its blanket of foliage.
The other three, who knew of the Irish but vaguely and indefinitely, as a race on the other side of the
globe, which, like ourselves, had succeeded in maintaining a precartous and fugitive existence in
rebellion against the Mongolian domination of the earth, were listening with interest to my theory that
Gerdi's ancestors of several hundred years ago must have been Irish. I explained that Gerdi was an
Irish type, and that her surname might well have been McMann, or MeMahan, and still wore anciently
"mac Mathghamhain." They were interested too in my surmise that "Gerdi" was the same name as that
which had been "Gerty" or "Gertrude" in the 20th Century.
In the middle of our discussion, we were startled by an alarm rocket that burst high in the air, far to
the north, spreading a pall of red smoke that drifted like a cloud. It was followed by others at
scattered points in the northern sky.
"A Han raid!" Bill exclaimed in amazement "The first in seven years!"
"Maybe it's just one of their ships off its course." I ventured.
"No," said Wilma in some agitation. "That would be green rockets. Red means only one thing, Tony.
They're sweeping the countryside with their dis beams. Can you see anything, Bill?"
"We had better get under cover," Gerdi said nervously. "The four of us are bunched here in the open.
For all we know they may be twelve miles up, out of sight, yet looking at us with a projector."
Bill had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his glass, but apparently saw nothing.
"We had better scatter, at that," he said finally. "It's orders, you know. See!" He pointed to the valley.
Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a moment above the foliage of the treetops.
"That's bad," Wilma commented, as she counted the jumpers. "No less than fifteen people visible, and
all clearly radiating from a central point. Do they want to give away our location?"
The standard orders covering air raids were that the population was to scatter individually. There
should be no grouping, or even pairing, in view of the destructiveness of the disintegrator rays.
Experience of generations had proved that if this were done, and everybody remained hidden beneath the
tree screens, the Hans would have to sweep mile after mile of territory, foot by foot, to catch more than a
small percentage of the community
Gerdi, howeyer, refused to leave Bill, and Wilma developed an equal obstinacy against quitting my
side. I was inexperienced at this sort of thing, she explained, quite ignoring the fact that she was too;
she was only thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last air raid.
However, since I could not argue her out of it, we leaped together about a quarter of a mile to the
right, while Bill and Gerdi disappeared down the hillside among the trees.
Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from 'which we might overlook the valley and the sky to
the north, and we found it near the top of the ridge, where, protected from visibility by thick branches,
we could look out between the tree trunks, and get a good view of the valley.
No more rockets went up. Except for a few of those waining red clouds, drifting lazily in a blue sky,
there was no visible indication of man's past or present existence anywhere in the sky or on the
ground.
Then Wilma gripped my arrn and pointed. I saw it; away off in the distance; looking like a phantom