The school

Начало книги

The instrument house at the edge of the runway was crowded with the high brass and top-drawer engineering staff of Firestone Aviation Corporation. They peered over one another’s shoulders and jockeyed politely for better views of the three-foot television screen at one end of the room. It showed the interior of the pilots’ compartment of the XB-91 now flying somewhere above them at an altitude of fifty thousand feet.

In the front row of observers Major Eugene Montgomery watched with a feeling of elation inside him. The Ninety-one seemed almost as much a personal triumph for him as it was for the engineers who built it. He had witnessed its building from scratch and some part of him was up there flying with it.

The Ninety-one was the first genuine battleship of the air. It was a city-smasher, capable of going to any spot on the globe and doing its work. Its armament assured a better than ninety per cent chance of destroying all opposition and returning safely.

Читать дальше →