"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 9 - The Omicron Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"How did you make a nonmetallic engine?" Yvette wondered.

"I didn't," Lady A replied with mounting impatience. "This module doesn't have an engine—that's
one less way it could be detected." She held up one hand to forestall the next obvious question. "And no,
we won't drop like a rock. In atmosphere, this module acts like a glider. Now stop questioning and get
inside."

The escape module had not been built to hold this many people comfortably. There was one pilot
seat, which Lady A took for herself, and a benchlike rim in a semicircle behind it for the other five people
to crowd onto as best they could. Ivanov, the last person in, sealed the module behind them and gave his
boss the signal that everything was ready.

On an instrument board below the cockpit window, Lady A watched the monitor screen to check
their progress. As she'd told them, the H-16 was rapidly approaching a dense cloud bank on its furious
descent to the surface of Omicron. She waited patiently until the proper moment and then, the instant they
hit the clouds, she pulled back on a lever in front of her.

The lever released a catch that held the glider in place within the ship's hold. Instantly a hatch
sprang open in front of them and a series of springs propelled the module at great speed out the hole and
away from the falling ship. For better or worse, they were now irrevocably committed to the planet
Omicron.

The change in their environment was startling. One moment they were in the hold of a ship, the
next they were gliding free in the air. The gray-white of the clouds came whipping by them, and there was
a sudden drop in both temperature and air pressure. Even with so many bodies pressed closely together,
the chill of a stormcloud in the upper atmosphere permeated the glider's insulation and soaked through to
their bones.

The egg-shaped module shared the H-16's downward speed at the time of separation, and for
several seconds they plummeted through the clouds toward the hard ground below. Then, just as they
broke through the cloud cover, Lady A pulled back on a second lever and a set of wings unfolded from the
body of the egg beneath them. Their little craft shook and shivered as it caught the violent air currents
below the clouds.

They were in the middle of a driving rainstorm. Even though they were on the daytime side of the
planet, the thick layer of clouds above them obscured the sun and made the sky gray and leaden. Now that
they were below the clouds they were pelted by hard droplets of rain and a bit of hail that had not
dissolved at this altitude. The rain streaked the windshield and obscured visibility so badly that Lady A
had to ask Tatiana to work the wipers manually from a lever inside the cockpit.

The day was so dark they could barely see the ground, spread out below them like a shadowy
diorama. They were over farm country that looked completely untouched by the enemy invasion. Large
rectangular fields covered the terrain like a patchwork quilt in differing shades of yellow, green, and
brown. The land was mostly flat, with a few gently rolling hills off in the distance. The tranquility of the
scene, even through the driving rain, seemed to belie the dire circumstances in which Omicron now found
itself.
 The enemy fighters continued down after the H-16; none of them peeled off to follow the glider,
so Lady A's ruse seemed to have worked. On the dashboard receiver, cameras from the ship transmitted
images of its final moments.