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

Still accelerating.

The scream of the turbine grew nearer, higherpitched, impossibly abrasive on the ears. Sam scrambled to his feet just as the special slued around the last turn. Now there was nothing ahead of it but a straight path and a gaggle of timing people flanking the finish line. This group got one glimpse of the thundering wheel, saw it gaining speed and trailing a sevenstory roostertail of snow, and abandoned ship like cats on polished linoleum. All, that is, except for the girl at the timer who had earmuffs on and wasn't looking and will always describe the passage of Sam's special as the Sudden Blizzard of Seventy-Nine.

Sam had his windbreaker off as the thing howled past him, and in one deft swoop he threw it into the blur of the great wheel. It was, he told me later, his only hope of jamming something because there was lots more fuel to be burned and he did not own an antitank gun.

The wadded cloth was effective in its way. For an instant the wheel skipped a beat, digested the offering, then belched shreds of nylon in all directions. Something, probably a sleeve, caught in a cleat and started to beat Botts rhythmically. The special accelerated
down the straight at something over 160 kilometers an hour. Sam wiped slush from his eyes and watched, now helpless. The pounding was too much for Botts and suddenly the driver was ejected.
The Botts trajectory was simply unbelievable if you didn't know what you were watching. From the driving position of a praying Moslem, Botts rose majestically toward heaven and began to pirouette in the air to one side. Tiring of this, Botts jerked, seemed to shrug, then fell in a series of falling leaf aerobatics before hitting flat in the snow. Flatter than we knew.
The special was bumping hard now. Every bump caused a higher bounce, and as it headed toward our parked cars the wheel steadied a few inches above the surface. Then the errant sleeve sailed away, carrying the cleat with it, and the big machine arrowed upward. It was airborne, and more so every second. The course physician sprinted after Botts, aspirin jouncing from his open bag.
The rest of us gaped at the special, daring and swooping above us in a pattern that seemed vaguely familiar. Half a minute later it rocketed away again, still higher, and began the same routine. It was then that Sam reached us.
The doctor returned flinty-eyed, holding up a rubber suit. "Where'd you hide the body;" he accused.
Sam nodded at the suit. "That's him. I just took an old scuba suit, sealed it, stuck a helmet on it, and pumped it up. I'll give it two hot patches and call you in the morning."

"You can't run a race without a driver," someone said.
"That's what the start official kept hollering," Sam responded, "and I kept explaining that my driver was really in the programming box." He squinted toward the sky. "But I wasn't finished programming it when the idiot hit the controls. The box was set to go where I had taken it before, but I didn't get a chance to program a stop."
The facts interlocked in my head. "Sam! Your driver was a robot?"
"Welcome to the machine age," Sam said dryly. "I didn't figure on my driver springing a leak, though; thought I had of Botts strapped in pretty well."
The reporter huffed up, looking grimly pleased. "What about that-that thing up there?" He pointed on high, where a contrail of steam followed a flashing silver streak. At that height it sounded like a sex-crazed mosquito. "Who's to say that iron windmill won't chew up a satellite or something?"
"I am," Sam said quietly. "I knew there'd be a low-pressure area over the wheel, but that piece of nylon created a higher differential when it bent the cleats. More lift. Now the special will go as high as thin air will let it, and then it'll run out of peroxide, and it'll keep running the same damn course I programmed until then-only skewed upwards."

The doctor, a nice guy but a bit out of his element now, shambled off, dragging the punctured scuba suit and muttering about an autopsy with Cousteau. A group of rescuers dug out the girl at the finish line. She was still at her post and only a little stunned under her mound of powder snow. She swore that Sam's machine had clocked the course in 27 seconds, roughly a 112-kilometer-an-hour average. That figured.

The reporter, still trying to promote fireworks, drew a crowd with the old citizen's arrest gambit. "You stand accused of reckless driving," he began.

"Only I wasn't driving," Sam reminded him.

"Unauthorized flying of unlicensed aircraft," he ployed. God knows, that much was true.

"If you can prove it," Sam murmured, glancing up.

"I'll impound it when it comes down. Ah, it will come down." It was a statement, but it was a question too.

"How very right you are," Sam said, glancing at his chronometer. "And it should be out of fuel shortly."

"Good." The reporter folded his arms, Fletcher Christian on the Bounty's deck, and glared into the sky. "And you should be jailed for improper construction. I know a few things, mister."

"Front page news," Sam replied. "Name one."

"You can embrittle something if you don't put the chrome on right. I read it somewhere. Right?"

Sam chewed an ebony cuticle reflectively. "It happens," he conceded.

"I thought so," snarled the reporter. "And you went and embrittled your roll center!"

Sam blinked, shook his head as if to clear it. I drew him aside and whispered how I'd had some sport with the Bugleboy, who didn't know an imaginary reference line from a breadline. Sam tried to hide the smile that was growing as he listened.

Then he called to the reporter. "You were right. Guess you'll have to write me up for that." Course workers stopped to listen. "And one other thing: the special is your impounded property, but barring wind drift, I'd say you have a problem." Sam headed for his pickup truck, cheerily shouting. "When it comes down, it will be doing roughly Mach two. Your problem is not being anywhere near where it hits, when it hits." He made a quick one fingered obeisance from his pickup. "Wear it in good health."