Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The distant orange wind sock blew out lazily, still from the south-west. There wasn’t enough fuel for frills like circuits[551], the gauges registered empty. Id’ have to go straight in, and get down first time[552]… get down. If I could.

I was close now. The club building developed windows, and there was Tom’s bungalow…

A wide banking turn[553] to line up with the old concrete runway. It looked so narrow, but the bombers had used it. Six hundred feet. My arms were shaking. I pushed down the lever of the undercarriage and the light went green as it locked. Five hundred. I put on full flap, maximum drag[554]… retrimmed. felt the plane get slower and heavier, soft on the controls. I could stall and fall out of the sky… a shade more power… still some fuel left… the end of the runway ahead with its white cross coming up to meet me, rushing up… two hundred feet. I was doing a hundred and twenty. I’d never landed a plane with a cockpit so high off the ground… allow for that[555]. One hundred… lower… I seemed to be holding the whole plane up. I closed the throttles completely and levelled out as the white cross and the bar slid underneath, and waited an agonised few seconds while the air speed fell down and down until there was too little lift to the wings and the whole mass began to sink.

The wheels touched and bounced, touched and stayed down, squeaking and screeching on the rough surface. With muscles like jelly, with only tendons, I fought to keep her straight. I couldn’t crash now. I wouldn’t. The big plane rocketted along the bumpy concrete. I’d never handled anything so powerful. I’d misjudged the speed and landed too fast and she’d never stop.

A touch of brake… agonising to be gentle with them and fatal if I wasn’t. They gripped and tugged and the plane stayed straight… more brake, heavier… it was making an impression… she wouldn’t flip over on to her back, she had a tricycle undercarriage with a nose wheel. I’d have to risk it. I pulled the brakes on hard and the plane shuddered with the strain, but the tyres didn’t burst and I hadn’t dipped and smashed a wing or bent the propellers and there wasn’t going to be a scratch on the blessed old bus… She slowed to taxi-ing speed with a hundred yards to spare before the runway tapered off into barbed wire and gorse bushes. Anything would have been enough. A hundred yards was a whole future.

Trembling, feeling sick, I wheeled round in a circle and rolled slowly back up the runway to where it ran closest to the airport buildings. There I put the brakes full on and stretched out a hand which no longer seemed part of me, and stopped the engines. The roar died to a whisper, and to nothing. I slowly pulled off the headset and listened to the cracking noises of the hot metal cooling.

It was done. And so was I. I couldn’t move from my seat. I felt disembodied. Burnt out. Yet in a sort of exhausted peace I found myself believing that as against all probability I had survived the night, so had Gabriella… that away back in Milan she would be breathing safely through her damaged lung. I had to believe it. Nothing else would do.[556]

Through the window I saw Tom Wells come out of his bungalow, staring first up at the circling fighters and then down at the D.C.4. He shrugged his arms into his old sheepskin jacket and began to run towards me over the grass.

Vocabulary

A

addict n человек с нездоровой тягой к игре, наркотикам и проч.

affability n дружелюбие

aloofness n отчужденность, равнодушие

anchorage n крепление

arrogant adj высокомерный

askew adv криво, косо, набок

B

bastard n ублюдок, незаконнорожденный

batty n чокнутый, сумасшедший

blinds n плотные шторы

blizzard n снежная буря, буран

blotting paper n промокашка

boathook n багор

brood mare n племенная кобыла

budge v сдвинуться с места

C

churlish adj неотесанный, хамский

civvies n (разг.) цивильная одежда

cockleshell n ракушка

colt n жеребенок

compulsively adv принудительно

condolence n соболезнование

connoisseur n знаток, любитель

consignment n груз, партия товаров

contingent adj случайный, возможный, условный

cussed adj проклятый, обруганный

D

deb n сокр. от debutante, дебютантка

debris n осколки, обломки

deter v удерживать, отпугивать

deteriorating adj ухудшающийся

die-hard adj (разг.) крутой, твердолобый

dilapidated adj ветхий, полуразрушенный

doddery adj трясущийся, нетвердый на ногах

duke n герцог

E

earl n граф (в Англии)

ebb n отлив (морской); упадок

eiderdown n пуховое одеяло, перина

embezzler n растратчик (чужих денег)

epoxy resin n эпоксидная смола

exasperated adj доведенный до белого каления, раздраженный

F

fetlock n щетка (часть ноги лошади)

filly n молодая кобыла