"Duncan Long - Anti-Grav Unlimited" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Duncan)

Anti-Grav Unlimited
Duncan Long
Copyright © 1988, 2002 by Duncan Long. Cover artwork of second edition by
Duncan Long. For more information, see http://duncanlong.com/

First printing by Avon Books, August 1988. Current edition published by
arrangement with the author.

Original ISBN: 0-380-75357-X.

All rights on both text and cover artwork reserved, which includes the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided
by US and international copyright laws. Any resemblance between characters in
this book and those living or dead is purely coincidental.
For Maggie, Nicholas, Kristen, and Chad, with much love.
 There's a new "Man in the Moon" — and the corporations exploiting Mother Earth are in for
an ugly surprise.
 Chapter 1
I drove up the gravel shoulder to the edge of the highway and held my steering wheel as the
giant vehicle trained its guns on me. I tried to look friendly. I gave a quick wave to go with my
biggest, fake smile. As the road train thundered past, the gun crew waved back and then I held on
as my van rocked in the wash of the twenty-six car chain of gray and black composite.
I let out a deep sigh of relief, thankful the gun crew hadn't done a Swiss-cheese number on
me and my van. Then I pulled onto Interstate 70 and quickly matched speed with the road train so
I could tag along behind it at a steady 150 klicks per hour.
We hurtled down the ribbon of concrete traveling westward through the barren, treeless
grassland that had been baked brown by the summer sun. Only a few abandoned farms and
remnants of fencing showed that men had once lived in the area. The only trouble I had from
there on was avoiding the wreckage that bounced alongside us from time to time as an old wreck
was swept off the road by the train's "cattle guard."
The rest of the trip to New Denver was pretty much uneventful except when the road train
smashed through a roadblock and shot up some hi-pees. I hoped the gun crew knew what they
were doing; the government generally frowned on blowing away their employees. But since the
road train kept going without having a fighter plane pound it into the pavement, I decided that the
hi-pees must have been renegades.
Which just goes to show that you can't trust anyone on the interstate.
Hours later, we left the grassland and crossed most of the barren Col-Kan desert. Soon the
shadowy, cloud-like Rocky Mountains were barely visible in the distance, and shortly thereafter
the spires of New Denver came into sight. Gradually, black charcoal piles that had long ago been
houses started to dot the rock and sand alongside the roadway, slowly giving way to rows of
rubble separated by sand laced with burnt bricks, bits of charcoal, and scrub brush. I was in one
of the suburbs that had surrounded old Denver in its heyday.
It was hard to imagine what the sprawling city must have been like before the water shortage
and the terrorist attack. The destruction of this city and a few others had also spelled the
beginning of the end for national superpowers; filling the vacuum were the international
corporations which took over and formed the world government.
Seeing my exit, I turned off the interstate with a wave to the tail gunner on the road train, then
headed down the new plastic roadway leading to New Denver. Fifteen minutes later I neared the
glass and steel buildings that looked like tall glistening jewels which had sprung out of the desert
around the space port. In the distance, a rocket thundered upward to arch toward some far away