"Donald Malcom - The Iron Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malcom Donald)

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The Iron Rain by Donald
Malcolm
CHAPTER 1
Looking back on it, you would think I should have known what was
coming. I was, after all, a professional astronomer; I had been doing a
long-term study of meteors and meteorites. But the Iron Rain caught me
as much by surprise as it did everyone else: all my background
accomplished was to allow me to understand the problem better once it
occurred.

It began as I was clearing up my papers, preparatory to flying back to
Manchester. I had just spent a busy two weeks as a guest lecturer at the
University of Strathclyde. Even at this time there were foreshadowings of
the nightmarish future. During my stay in Glasgow, reports had come in
about fourteen large meteorites that had caused havoc, destruction and
death at random parts of the globe; certainly others must have fallen
undiscovered in the oceans, the deserts and the polar regions.

I must say I was worried. One destructive meteorite that size in an
average lifetime would be headline news. The increased incidence made
me feel extremely uncomfortable. Had I known how bad the situation was
to become, I'd have been even more worried.

Trouble struck at about three o'clock that January Friday, just as I was
getting ready to leave my university office for Glasgow's Abbotsinch
Airport. I heard a distant, thunderous roar. As though ten thousand
rampaging steam engines were approaching from the west, the building
began to shake. From the street below came the screeching of brakes
mingled with the sounds of breaking glass and screams. The window
behind my desk shattered and a small object sizzled and flashed across the
room and embedded itself in a cupboard door.

When the shaking had subsided, I picked my way through the glass to
the gaping hole where the window had been. The office was high up in the
John Street block, and as far as I could see in either direction, the sky was
fast being blotted out by flame and thick smoke.

I turned away and walked to the cupboard, scrunching on the shards of
glass. I had no need to speculate on the cause of the noise and the fire. I
prised a pea-sized object out of the door and let it roll about on my palm.
The tiny meteorite, a fragment of the large one, was black, pitted and still
quite hot. It had narrowly missed killing me.