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

the woods or the wild men, they treated Americans as beasts, and were conscious of no human
brotherhood with them. As time went on, and synthetic processes of producing foods and materials
were further developed, less and less ground was needed by the Hans for the purposes of agriculture;
finally, even the working of mines was abandoned when it became cheaper to build up metal from
electronic vibrations than to dig them out of the ground.
The Han race, devitalized by its vices and luxuries with machinery and scientific processes to satisfy its
every want, with virtually no necessity of labor, began to assume a defensive attitude toward the
Americans.
And quite naturally, the Americans regarded the Hans with a deep, grim hatred; they longed
desperately for the day when they should be powerful enough to rise and annihilate the Mongolian
Blight that lay over the continent.
At the time of my awakening, the gangs were rather loosely organized, but were considering the
establishment of a special military force, whose special business it would be to harry the Hans and bring
down their air ships whenever possible, without causing general alarm among the Mongolians.
Wilma told me she was a member of the Wyoming Gang, which claimed the entire Wyoming Valley as
its territory, under the leadership of Boss Hart. Her mother and father were dead, and she was
unmarried, so she was not a 'family member." She lived in a little group of tents known as Camp 17,
under a woman Camp Boss, with seven other girls.
Her duties alternated between military or police scouting and factory work. For the two-week period
which would end the next day, she had been on "air patrol" This did not mean, as I first imagined, that
she was flying, but rather that she was on the lookout for Han ships over this outlying section of the
Wyoming territory, and had spent most of her time perched in. the tree tops scanning the skies. Had
she seen one she would have fired a "drop flare" several miles off to one side, which would ignite when
it was floating vertically toward the earth, so that the direction or point from which it had been fired
might not be guessed by the airship and bring a blasting play of the disintegrator ray in her vicinity.
Other members of the air patrol would send up rockets on seeing hers, until finally a scout equipped
with an ultrophone, which, unlike the ancient radio, operated on the ultronic ethereal vibrations, would
pass the warning simultaneously to the headquarters of the Wyoming Gang and other communities
within a radius of several hundred miles. This would also alert the few American rocketships that might
be in the air, which instantly would duck to cover either through forest clearings or by flattening down to
earth in green fields where their coloring would probably protect them from observation.
The favorite American method of propulsion was known as "rocketing." The rocket is what I would
describe, from my 20th Century comprehension of the matter, as an extremely powerful gas blast,
atomically produced through the stimulation of chemical action. Scientists of today regard it as a childishly
simple reaction, but by that very virtue, most economical and elficient.
But tomorrow, Wilma explained, she would go back to work in the cloth plant, where she would take
charge of one of the synthetic processes by which those wonderful substitutes for woven fabrics of wool,
cotton and silk are produced. At the end of another two weeks, she would be back on military duty
again, perhaps at the same work, or maybe as a "contact guard," on duty where the territory of the
Wyomings merged with that of the Delawares, or the "Susquannas" or one of the half dozen other "gangs"
in that section of the country which I knew as Pennsylvania and New York States.
Wilina cleared up for me the mystery of those flying leaps which she and her assailants had made, and
explained in the following manner the inertron belt balances weight: "jumpers" were in common use at
the time I "awoke," though they were costly, for at that time ineitron had not been produced in very
great quantity. They were very useful in the forest. They were belts, strapped high under the arins,
containing an amount of inertron adjusted to the wearer's weight and purposes: In effect they made a man
weigh as little as he desired; two pounds if he liked.
"Floaters" are a later development of "jumpers"-rocket motors encased in inertron blocks and
 strapped to the back in such a way that the wearer floats, when drifting, facing slightly downward.
With his motor in operation, he moves like a diver, headforemost, controlling his direction by twisting