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

Returning to the car, I set about getting the body out. The force of the
crash had tilted the car up and I had to get down on my knees. It was
neither easy nor pleasant. I covered her head with my car duster and,
putting my hands under her armpits, began to pull. In my awkward
position, I couldn't exert much leverage and I was soon sweating. I kept
hitting my head, which aggravated the bump already there. Finally, I had
her out onto the road.

Cars and pedestrians still passed, but no one offered to help. Not that I
expected any; people had their own problems. I lifted her body—she wasn't
as heavy as she'd seemed when I pulled her out of the car—and carried her
to the shop. I took her through to the rear, opened the door of the large
refrigerator, and laid her on the floor inside. I stood, looking down.
Nothing would get at her here. I left the cloth over her face.

I closed and secured the door before going outside again. A man and a
woman, carrying suitcases, passed quickly and didn't give me as much as
a glance. The flames had set up a roar of their own as they leapt from
building to building, so I didn't hear the meteorite coming in until it was
almost on top of me. It was a very small one, but I felt the heat of its
passage as I jogged back to the car. My body jarred as I threw myself
down onto the street, momentarily oblivious to the splinters driving into
my hands.

The meteorite sizzled past and hit the street about fifty yards away in
an eruption that scattered fierce white sparks and fragments in profusion.
I was struggling to my feet when I smelled burning material. Quickly I
whipped off my coat. The left tail flap was smoldering and a small flame
quested at the edge of the burn. I beat it out on the ground and put the
coat on again.

I reached the car and, while I considered what I was going to do next,
picked shards of glass out of my hands. Fortunately, I had no serious
wounds. I was alone, a stranger in the city, with nowhere to go; and I had
no transportation. During my stay in Glasgow, I'd received invitations to
the homes of several of my colleagues. One lived in Milngavie, another in
Airdrie, the third in Barrhead: all just places on a map.

I checked my watch: 4.45 p.m., almost two hours since the meteorites
had started to fall in large numbers. And they were still coming; I could
detect the detonations above the crackle and roar of the flames.

This meteor stream might be called a rogue. Most streams are
associated with the debris left in the wake of a comet and follow their own
orbits around the sun. As such, the Earth crosses those orbits at fairly
well-known specified times of the year. This stream was totally
unpredictable. The only satisfactory explanation I had been able to come
up with is that the sun, in its own journey through the Galaxy, was
sweeping through a section of interstellar space that was peppered with
debris of its own. If that were the case, there was no telling how long this