"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Worlds of If" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

seemed as if we'd been doing just that all our lives. I'd decided to stop over in Paris on my way back
from Moscow, and I'd secured her promise to let me see her. She was different, I tell you; she was
nothing like the calculating Whimsy White, and still less like the dancing, simpering, giddy youngsters one
meets around at social affairs. She was just Joanna, cool and humorous, yet sympathetic and serious, and
as pretty as a Majolica figurine.

We could scarcely realize it when the steward passed along to take orders for luncheon. Four hours out?
It seemed like forty minutes. And we had a pleasant feeling of intimacy in the discovery that both of us
liked lobster salad and detested oysters. It was another bond; I told her whimsically that it was an omen,
nor did she object to considering it so.

Afterwards we walked along the narrow aisle to the glassed-in observation room up forward. It was
almost too crowded for entry, but we didn't mind that at all, as it forced us to sit very close together. We
stayed long after both of us had begun to notice the stuffiness of the air.

It was just after we had returned to our seats that the catastrophe occurred. There was no warning save
a sudden lurch, the result, I suppose, of the pilot's futile last-minute attempt to swerveтАФjust that and then
a grinding crash and a terrible sensation of spinning, and after that a chorus of shrieks that were like the
sounds of a battle.

It was battle. Five hundred people were picking themselves up from the floor, were trampling each other,
milling around, being cast helplessly down as the great rocket-plane, its left wing but a broken stub,
circled downward toward the Atlantic.

The shouts of officers sounded and a loudspeaker blared. "Be calm," it kept repeating, and then, "There
has been a collision. We have contacted a surface ship. There is no dangerтАФ There is no dangerтАФ"

I struggled up from the debris of shattered seats. Joanna was gone; just as I found her crumpled between
the rows, the ship struck the water with a jar that set everything crashing again. The speaker blared, "Put
on the cork belts under the seats. The life-belts are under the seats."
I dragged a belt loose and snapped it around Joanna, then donned one myself. The crowd was surging
forward now, and the tail end of the ship began to drop. There was water behind us, sloshing in the
darkness as the lights went out. An officer came sliding by, stooped, and fastened a belt about an
unconscious woman ahead of us. "You all right?" he yelled, and passed on without waiting for an answer.

The speaker must have been cut on to a battery circuit. "And get as far away as possible," it ordered
suddenly. "Jump from the forward port and get as far away as possible. A ship is standing by. You will
be picked up. Jump from theтАФ". It went dead again.

I got Joanna untangled from the wreckage. She was pale; her silvery eyes were closed. I started dragging
her slowly and painfully toward the forward port, and the slant of the floor increased until it was like the
slide of a ski-jump. The officer passed again. "Can you handle her?" he asked, and again dashed away.

I was getting there. The crowd around the port looked smaller, or was it simply huddling closer? Then
suddenly, a wail of fear and despair went up, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls
had given. I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down upon us. I had been late
again.

That was all. I raised shocked and frightened eyes from the subjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who
was scribbling on the edge of the table.