"Patrick Tilley - Amtrak 1 - Cloud Warrior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

Six.

The rig consisted of two circular ramps wrapped around massive central
pillars housed side-by-side in a sausage-shaped shaft. In elevation,
they looked like two giant corkscrews with opposing threads; the
left-hand ramp descending eleven full turns in a clockwise direction;
the right-hand one, anticlockwise.



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As each ramp wound down the shaft around its central pillar, it created
a rectangular tunnel of air space one hundred and thirty feet wide and
ninety feet high. In the centre of the shaft the two ramps touched rim
to rim enabling a pupil pilot aboard one of the Academy's Skyhawks to
fly from one to the other, weaving his way up and down the shaft in an
almost infinitely variable series of ascending or descending
figure-eights and tight right- or left-hand turns around the two
pillars.

Runways for take-off and landing were situated in flight access tunnels
at the top and bottom of the rig and these were linked by express
elevators able to carry two Skyhawks with their wings folded.

The overall height of the Snake Pit was some twelve hundred feet. The
shaft containing the spiral ramps measured seven hundred by three
hundred and fifty feet.

Each flight access tunnel was one hundred and fifty feet wide, one
hundred feet high, and a quarter of a mile long.

And the whole colossal structure, together with the other rigs and the
rest of the Flight Academy had been drilled, hammered and blasted out
of the bedrock several hundred




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feet beneath the desert sands of New
Mexico near the ruins of a city that, in the prehistory of the
Federation, had been known as Alamogordo.

Already rated above-average, Brickman knew every twist and turn of the
Snake Pit. He knew he would make it through to the finish line,
out-performing the rest of the senior year in the process. But that