The Precipice

Начало книги

To Irving Levitt, a rare jewel among men.

To Barbara, who adorns my life with beauty.

And with special thanks to Jeff Mitchell, a real rocket scientist; to Chris Fountain, metallurgist and optimist; and to Lee Modesitt, an economist with imagination; true friends all.

“Jesus,” the pilot kept murmuring. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The helicopter was racing north, bucking, jolting between the shattered land below and the thick dark gray clouds scudding just above, trying to follow Interstate 55 from the Memphis International Airport to what was left of the devastated city. You could not see the highway; it was carpeted from horizon to horizon with refugees, bumper to bumper traffic inching along, an un-ending stream of cars, trucks, vans, busses, people on foot swarming like ants, trudging painfully along the shoulders of the road in the driving, soaking rain, women pushing baby carriages, men and boys hauling carts piled high with whatever they could salvage from their homes. Flood water was lapping along the shoulder embankment, rising, still rising, reaching for the poor miserable people as they fled their homes, their hopes, their world in a desperate attempt to escape the rising waters. Dan Randolph felt the straps of his safety harness cutting into his shoulders as he stared grimly out the window from his seat behind the two pilots. His head throbbed painfully and the filter plugs in his nostrils were hurting again. He barely noticed the copter’s buffeting and jouncing in the choppy wind as he watched the swollen tide of refugees crawling sluggishly along the highway. It’s like a war zone, Dan thought. Except that the enemy is Mother Nature. The flooding was bad enough, but the earthquake broke their backs.

Читать дальше →