"John E. Stith - Manhattan Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stith John E)

pivot into the solar wind. The black ship kept adjusting its
orientation until one octagonal surface pointed generally at the
distant yellow G-type star. The precise alignment was at the
small blue planet, third from the sun. Moments later, the
enormous ship began to accelerate smoothly toward Earth.
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The whup-whup-whup from the chopper's blades rose in pitch
and volume as the pilot pulled back on the collective, and the
chopper rose a meter off the concrete at the edge of Manhattan.
The six passengers were all secured, and the sounds in the
pilot's headphones were positive, reassuring. He let the craft
hover a moment on the ground-effect cushion as he readjusted his
shoulder strap. As soon as he felt in control, he let the
chopper continue its rise. Below him the circular markings of
Manhattan's East 60th Street heliport began to shrink. As he
rose, he let the chopper turn slowly, and he scanned the space
over nearby building tops. When the chopper faced the East River
and JFK International beyond, the pilot pushed on the cyclic
stick and tilted the chopper slightly forward, still rising as
the craft began to move toward the airport.
The pilot enjoyed the runs between Manhattan and JFK,
particularly at times like now--the morning rush hour. This was
one of the few jobs in flying where you could "drive" over the
roads below in Queens. He took a lot of pleasure in passing
slow-moving traffic on the Long Island Expressway, BQE, and Van
Wyck, cruising right over the stalls and backed up sections,
ignoring pileups and emergacharge trucks.
He reached cruising height just before the East River.
Below was the Queensboro Bridge, doing its best to jam more
people into Manhattan.
A sudden shadow was the first indication of trouble.
Reflexes took over and he lost a little altitude just in case.
If the passengers complained, he couldn't tell, because the
headphones and the rotor roar would block anything up to a
scream.
The helicopter pilot had just convinced himself there was no
problem when a faint pencil of red light cut the grimy sky
vertically in front of the windshell bubble. He jammed the stick
and tried to veer away, but he had no time. The whine of the
rotors suddenly changed pitch as the rotor blades hit the shaft
of laser light. The chopper became a machine gun, firing severed
pieces of rotor off to his left. In milliseconds, the slicing
light had whittled every rotor down to half its original length,
and then the chopper itself hit the beam. A band saw moving at
the speed of light, the laser sliced the chopper right down the
middle. The engine overhead exploded as the casing surrounding
the whirling components split into pieces.
Shrapnel from the exploding engine perforated bodies of the
pilot and passengers as the two halves of the chopper began their
plunge to the East River. The pilot hadn't even had time to