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

flying through. the air; then the explosion, and he had vanished. He never finished his leap.
How many more of them there were I don't know, hut this must have been too much for them. They
used a final round of shells on us, all of which exploded harmlessly, and shortly after I heard them
swishing and crashing away from us through the tree tops. Not one of them descended to earth.
Now I had time to give some attention to my companion. She was, I found, a girl, and not a boy.
Despite her bulky appearance, due to the peculiar belt strapped around her body high up under the
arms, she was very slender, and very pretty.
There was a stream not far away, from which I brought. water and bathed her face and wound.
Apparently the mystery of these long leaps, the monkey-like ability to jump from bough to bough, and
of the bodies that floated gently down instead of falling, lay in the belt. The thing was some sort of
anti-gravity helt that almost balanced the weight of the wearer, thereby tremendously multiplying the
propulsive power of the leg muscles, and the lifting power of the arms.
When the girl came to, she regarded me as curiously as I did her, and promptly began to quiz me.
Her accent and intonation puzzled me a lot, but nevertheless we were able to understand each other
fairly well, except for certain words and phrases. I explained what had happened while she lay
unconscious, and she thanked me simply for saving her life.
"'You are a strange exchange," she said, eying my clothing quizzically. Evidently she found it
mirthprovoking by contrast with her own neatly efficient garb. "Don't you understand what I mean by
exchange?' I mean ah-let me see-a stranger, somebody from some other gang. What gang do you
belong to?" (She pronounced it "gan", with only a suspicion of a nasal sound.)
I laughed. "I'm not a gangster," I said. But she evidently did not understand this word. "I don't belong
to any gang," I explained, "and never did. Does everybody belong to a gang nowadays?"
"Naturally," she said, frowning. "If you don't belong to a gang, where and how do you live? Why have
you not found and joined a gang? How do you eat? Where do you get your clothing?"
"I've been eating wild game for the past two weeks," I explained, "and this clothing I-er-ah-" I paused,
wondering how I could explain that it must be many hundred years old.
In the end I saw I would have to tell my story as well as I could, piecing it together with my
assumptions as to what had happened. She listened patiently; incredulously at first, but less so as I went
on. When I had finished, she sat thinking for a long time.
"That's hard to believe," she said, "but I believe it." She looked me over with frank interest.
"Were you married when you slipped into unconsciousness down in that mine?" she asked me
suddenly. I assured her I had never married. "Well, that simplifies matters," she continued. "You see, if
you were technically classed as a family man; I could take you back only as an invited exchange and I,
being unmarried, and no relation of yours, couldn't do the inviting."

THE FOREST GANGS

She gave me a brief outline of the very peculiar social and economic system under which her
people lived. At least it seemed very peculiar from my 20th Century view-point.
I learned with amazement that exactly 492 years had passed over my head as I lay unconscious in the
mine.
Wilma Deering, for that was her name, did not profess to be a historian, and so could give me only a
sketchy outline of the wars that had been fought, and the manner in which such radical changes had
come about. It seemed that another war had followed the First World War, in which nearly all the
European nations had banded to gether to break the financial and industrial power of America. They
succeeded in their purpose, though they were beaten, for the war was a terrific one, and left America,
 like themselves, gasping, bleeding and disorganized, with only the hollow shell of a victory.
This opportunity had been seized by the Russian Soviets, who had made a coalition with the Chinese
tn sweep over all Europe and reduce it to a state of chaos.
America, industrially geared to world production and the worldtrade, collapsed economically, and