"dean_ing_-_sam_and_the_sudden_blizzard_machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

I was casual. "Possibly. Indy, Atlanta 500, Le Mansbut Sam doesn't crave publicity these days."

"He's public property," the pencil pusher snorted. "But he musta turned chicken in his old age; he's registered as the owner of that Rube Goldberg waterwheel, but the driver's some lunatic named Botts."

While I fought myself to keep from feeding this guy a few knuckles, a nagging doubt clung to me. Why wasn't Sam driving? Had he finally lost his nerve on a measly small-time event?

The reporter wheedled more information. He had faucet charm and turned it on and off as it suited him. "You a good of friend of good of Sam?"

"That pleasure is mine," I said.

"Maybe you can gimme some details on his, uh, whatchamacallit. The Bugle prides itself on
accuracy." His look dared me to disbelieve it.

"Sure. Kinda hard to know where to start," I hedged, wondering if I could get away with wild inaccuracies. I invented quickly. "You could mention the desmodromic valves," I began.

"I intended to. Uh, how d'you spell it?"

"Like the inventor," I lied, warming to the game. "Herr Desmond Droemik." I spelled it out. "And you'll notice the hydrodynamic spoilers."

He was writing like mad. "Come again?"

"To spoil the hydrodynamics," I frowned, with a wisp of scorn. "And the outer-space frame, obviously. With unlimited-slip differential and . . . and a chromed roll center."

When physicists learn to chrome plate the equator, or any other imaginary line, then Sam will be able to put chrome on a roll center, which is also an imaginary line. My twinge of guilt evaporated in a warm rush of fresh fantasy. "And of course it has computer designed steering," I concluded, reaching wildly enough to grasp a great truth by the tail. But how could I know? I shrugged. "Otherwise, Sam's rig is pretty ordinary."

He cranked his spigot on for me. "Hey, you were lotsa help, fella. Maybe I could mention your name. Immortality in print!"

"Gaston Martin," I perjured, and shook his hand. Then I sloped off down the hill, whistling an innocent medley.

Sam had finished his trek before I reached bottom and was fiddling with something under his tarp. The word was spreading that Sam had

lost his nerve. Nobody could locate Botts, his driver. Sam drove up the hill by the easy back way and parked near the start line. The start official was in brief conversation with him, and we watched them wrestle a ramp from the pickup to the ice. Presently, the last serious entrant made his run; it was a conventional go-cart and expired conventionally in a deep snowdrift. By the time the driver was exhumed from his own personal avalanche, Sam had his vehicle fueled and waiting at the start line. Sure enough, Sam wasn't driving.

A chubby stranger in a sleek black coverall was strapped in place, inhumanly calm under the circumstances. During his last-minute checks, Sam was in a lively dialogue with the official. I was heartbroken that Sam could accept another driver in his place, and through my misting eyes it seemed that Sam and the official were actually arguing. I heard the muted buzz around me; everybody had a theory because nobody knew anything.

The P. A. system crackled. "THE SAMBOTT SPECIAL," it boomed; "DRIVER, R. O. BOTTS." Then, like everybody else, it fell silent.

High above us, the tiny figure of Sam made an adjustment at his power unit. A spurt of steam billowed like an omen in the frosty air. A moment later its harsh tooth-loosening wail reached us, and Sam was fooling around near the steering. I could swear the little black box was nestled there.

Sam knelt clear of the great machine, intent
on the steering. The official, stamping and yelling with hands over his ears, slipped on the ice and caught himself on the controls. And engaged the drive gear and was flung into Sam, and Botts didn't bother to hit the reverse. As a matter of cold fact, Botts had no brakes.

In an instant, Sam was on his feet, running after the special; an exercise in pure loserism. The machine keened its air-raid siren song, the big wheel churning down the slope, a roostertail of snow lofting up, up, and away behind. The gasp from the crowd must've lowered ambient air pressure by five pounds; we all expected a god-awful smash at Turn One.

But the special simply laid over at an angle and disappeared around the bend. When it reappeared near Turn Tree, a cheer went up and Sam went down, having blindly run through the roostertail , into banked snow. Next came a twisty uphill stretch, and judging by the noise, the turbine was revving harder than ever. Sam abandoned his direct chase and halfclambered, half-fell straight down the embankment. It was a maneuver that would bring him to the course just past the last turn, before the timer at the finish line. I wondered if he intended to trip the damned thing, intimidate Botts, or signal him-assuming they both survived that long.

The special was surviving, but only by inches. Turn Six was a fiendish righthander of decreasing radius, bounded by the bluff on the outside and thin air on the inside. Botts would have to shut down his power long before he reached it: but Botts was not shutting down at

all. Before our bulging eyes, the machine angled toward the outside and, running flat-out, swept up the side of the bluff that followed the curve of the course. Like a trick cyclist at a carnival, Botts and the machine shrieked around the curving wall while absolutely horizontal, then shot out of the curve onto the course again.