"James P. Hogan - Giants 3 - Giant's Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

a low moaning sound. It lasted for a second or two, faded away, then came back again and this time
persisted. It swelled slowly to a steady drone. A frown began forming on Hunt's face as he
listened. He turned and glanced back, and saw that several of the UNSA people were exchanging
puzzled looks too. There was something wrong. That sound was too familiar to be from any starship.
Mutterings started breaking out, then ceased abruptly as a dark shape materialized out of the
cloud base and continued descending on a direct line toward the
base. It was a standard Boeing 1227 medium-haul, transonic VTOL. -- a model widely used by
domestic carriers and UNSA's preferred type for general-purpose duties. The tension that had been
building up around the apron released itself in a chorus of groans and curses.
Behind Heller and Packard, Caldwell, his face dark with fury, spun around to confront a
bewildered UNSA officer. "I thought this area was supposed to have been cleared," he snapped.
The officer shook his head helplessly. "It was. I don't understand...Somebo -- "
"Get that idiot out of here!"
Looking flustered, the officer hurried away and disappeared through the open door of the
mess hall. At the same time voices from the control room inside began pouring out over the
loudspeaker, evidently left inadvertently live in the confusion.
"I can't get anything out of it. It's not responding."
"Use the emergency frequency."
"We've already tried. Nothing."
"For Christ's sake, what's happening in here? Caldwell just chewed my balls off outside.
Find out from Yellow Six who it is."
"I've got 'em on the line now. They don't know, either. They thought it was ours."
"Gimme that goddam phone!"
The plane leveled out above the edge of the marshes about a mile away and kept coming,
heedless of the volley of brilliant red warning flare~ fired from the top of McClusky's control
tower. It slowed to a halt above the open area of concrete in front of the reception party, hung
motionless for a moment, and then started sinking toward the ground. A handful of UNSA officers
and technicians ran forward making frantic crossed-arms signals over their heads to wave it off,
but fell back in disarray as it came on down regardless and settled. Caldwell strode ahead of the
group, gesticulating angrily and shouting orders at the UNSA figures who were converging around
the nose and making signs up at the cockpit.
"Imbeciles!" Danchekker muttered. "This kind of thing should never happen."
"It looks as if Murphy's back from vacation," Lyn said resignedly in Hunt's ear. But Hunt
only half heard. He was staring hard at the Boeing with a strange look on his face. There was


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something very odd about that aircraft. It had landed in the mid --
die of a sea of watery snow and slush churned up by the activity of the last few days, yet
its landing jets hadn't thrown up the cloud of spray and vapor as they should have. So maybe it
didn't have any landing jets. If that were so it might have looked like a 1227, but it certainly
wasn't powered like one. And there didn't seem to be much response from the cockpit to the antics
of the people below. In fact, unless Hunt's eyes were deceiving him, there wasn't anybody in the
cockpit at all. Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin as the penny dropped.
"Vie, what is it?" Lyn asked. "What's funny?"
"What's the obvious way to hide something in the middle of an airfield from a surveillance
system?" he asked. He gestured toward the plane, but before he could say any more a voice that
could have belonged to a natural-born American boomed out across the apron from its direction.