"04 - Mirror of Ice by Gary Wright" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

sleds riding up the vertical ice wall and holding there, ice
chips spraying back like contrails from those on the lower
part of the wall as they edged their runners against the turn.
He came in far right and fast, riding high on the wall and
diving off with good acceleration.
The ice was a brilliant blur underneath now, and he could
feel the trembling rumble of his sled. They rattled into the
Chute, a steep traverse, still gaining speed, still bunched and
jostling for position. He was in the rear but this was good; he
didn't like this early crowding for the comers.
The sheer wall of Basher Bend loomed, a 120-degree right
that dropped hard coming out. He was following close in the
slipstream of the sled in front of him, overtaking because of
the lessened wind resistance. The corner came, and they were
on the wall again. With his slightly greater speed he was able
to go higher on the wall, nearly to the top and above the
other sled. His G-suit tightened. They swarmed out of the
corner and into the Stra-fing Run, a long, steep dive with a
hard pull-out.
A roar rose from the mountain now as the sleds reached
speed, a dull rumble like that of avalanche . . . and that is
actually what they were nowan avalanche of sleds, and
just as deadly.
He pulled ahead of the other sled in the dive and hit the
savage pull-out right on the tail of another, and the next turn
curved up before them: Hell's Left, a double corner, an
abrupt left falling into a short straight with another sharp left
at the bottom. He was still overtaking, and they went up the
wall side by side, he on the inside, under the other. He eased
his left pedal, using edges for the first time, holding himself
away from the other by a safe six inches. The course dropped
away, straight down the mountain to the second half of the
corner, and he felt the sickening sudden smoothness of leaving
the ice-he had tried it too fast, and the course was falling
away under him. . ..
. .. old Rolf De Kepler, "The Flying Dutchman," laughing
over his beer and saying, "Always I am spending more time
off the ice than on, hah? So this is more easy to my stomach.
Already I have four G-suits to give up on me."
. . . and he had made his last flight three years ago off the
top at the bottom of Hell's Left . . . 400 yards, they claimed.
He held firm and straight on the wheel and pulled care-
fully, barely opening his brakes. The sled touched at a slight
angle, lurched, but he caught it by edging quickly. The other
sled had pulled ahead. He tucked in behind it. The second left
was rushing up at them, narrow and filled with sleds. They
dove into it less than a foot apart, loe chips streamed back
from edging runners, rattling against his sled like a storm of
bullets. There was an abrupt lurching, the quick left-right
slam of air turbulence. A sled was braking hard somewhere