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

his body and by movements of his outstretched arms and hands. Ballast weights locked in the front of
the belt adjust weight and lift. Some men prefer a few ounces of weight in floating, using a slight motor
thrust to overcome this. Others prefer a buoyance balance of a few ounces. The inadvertent dropping
of weight is not a serious matter. The motor thrust always can be used to descend. But as an extra
precaution, in case the motor should fail, for any reason, there are built into every belt a number of
detachable sections, one
more of which can be discarded to balance off any loss in weight.
"But who were your assailants," I asked, "and why were you attacked?"
Her assailants, she told me, were members of an outlaw gang, referred to as "Bad Bloods," a group
which for several generations had been under the domination of leaders who tried to advance the
interests of their clan by tactics which their neighbors had come to regard as unfair, and who in
consequence had been virtually boycotted. Their purpose had been to slay Wilma near Delaware
frontier, making it appear that the crime had been committed by Delaware scouts and thus embroil. the
Delawares and Wyomings in acts of reprisal against each other, or at least cause suspicions.
Fortunately they had not succeeded in surprising her, and she had been successful in dodging them for
some two hours before the shooting began, at the moment when I arrived. on the scene.
"But we must not stay here talking," Wilma concluded. I have to take you in, and besides I must
report this attack right away. I think we had better slip over to the other side of the mountain.
Whoever is on that post will have a phone, and I can make a direct report. But you'll have to have a
belt. Mine alone won't help much against. our combined weights, and there's little to be gained by
jumping heavy. It's almost as bad as walking." -
After a little search, we found one of the men I had killed, who had floated down among the trees
some distance away and whose belt was not badly damaged. In detaching it from his body, it nearly
got away from me and shot up in the air. Wilma caught it, however, and though it reinforced the lift of
her own belt so that she had to hook her knee around a branch to hold. herself down, she saved it. I
climbed the tree, and with my weight added to hers, we floated down easily.

LIFE IN THE 25TH CENTURY

We were delayed in starting for quite a while since I had to acquire a few crude ideas about the
technique of using these belts. I had been sitting down, for instance, with the belt strapped about me,
enjoying an ease similar to that of a comfortable armchair; when I stood up with a natural exertion of
muscular effort, I shot ten feet into the air, with a wild instinctive thrashing of arms and legs that amused
Wilma greatly.
But after some practice, I began to get the trick of gauging muscular effort to a minimum of vertical
and a maximum of horizontal. The correct form, I found, was a measure comparable to that of
skating. I found, also, that in forest work the arms and hands could be used to great advantage in
swinging along from branch to branch, so prolonging leaps almost indefinitely at times.
In going up the side of the mountain, I found that my 20th Century muscles did have an advantage, in
spite of lack of skill with the belt; and since the slopes were very sharp, and most of our leaps were
upward, I could have outdistanced Wilma, but when we crossed the ridge and descended, she
outstripped me with her superior technique. Choosing the steepest slopes, she would crouch in the top of
a tree, and propel herself outward, literally diving until; with the loss of horizontal momentum, she would
assume a more upright position and float down-ward. In this manner she would sometimes cover as
much as a quarter of a mile in a single leap, while I leaped and scrambled clumsily behind, thoroughy
enjoying the sensation.
Halfway down the niountain, we saw another greenclad figure leap out above the tree tops toward us.
The three of us perched on an outcropping of rock from which a view for many miles around could be
had, while Wilma hastily explained her adventure and my presence to her fellow guard, whose name
 was Alan. I learned later that this was the modern form of Helen.