"S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 01 - Island in the Sea of Time 484" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

She looked up at him, white around the lips. "I ran a
comparisonтАФI've got a stellar progressions program on my
computer. This is not the sky of March 1998."

"Why haven't the morning planes arrived?" someone said
plaintively. "We still can't raise the mainland. We've had to
ground everything because we can't file flight plans, and there
are people waiting for their planes!"

Cofflin held on to the tightly controlled fear that made him
want to snap at the hapless airport employee, or at Rosenthal for
blowing her nose behind him. The airport was a little stretch of
double pavement off in the middle of the island's moor and
scrubland not far from the south coast. Twin-engine prop puddle
jumpers flew in from the mainland, and private planes. Right
now it looked a little forlorn in the light of earliest dawn, the sky
blue but bleak and cold with mare's tails of high cloud. The
buildings were shingle-covered, like most stuff on the island; a
bunch of mainlanders were waiting, with their children and
carry-on luggage. Waiting to go to an America he suspected
they'd never see again.
 "Sorry, Mary," he said. "That's what I'm trying to find out.
Andy Toffler here yet?"

"You called?" a voice said. "Jared. Mornin', ma'am."

Cofflin turned; there was Andy, in a battered old leather flying
jacket, holding a paper cup of coffee and one of the Emergency
Town MeetingтАФ1:00 P.M. Today flyers the police chief had
ordered spread around.

"Andy. I need an emergency flight to the mainland."

"I hate to take her up so soon," the pilot said. "God alone
knows what all that, whatever-it-was did to the electronics. I still
can't get my radio to pick up anything but stations here on
Nantucket."

"It's the only seaplane on the island," Chief Cofflin said.

Andy looked at him. "Something wrong, Jared?" he said. "I
mean, beyond what we know's wrong. Why do you need a
floatplane to hop over to Boston?" His eyes narrowed as he
looked at Rosenthal and saw the carrying case over Cofflin's
shoulder. "Why the scattergun?"

"Andy, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Look, I don't
often ask for favors, butтАФ"

"Okay, okay," the pilot said, spreading his hands in a