Airport. Аэропорт. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Уровень В2
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After Captain Harris’s two flights, of which tonight’s would be the second, he would be given a final check by a senior supervisory captain before being accepted for international command.
Such checks – as well as regular six-monthly check flights, which all pilots of all airlines were required to undergo – entailed an aerial scrutiny of ability and flying habits.
Despite the fact that captains checked each other, the tests, both regular and special, were usually very serious. The pilots wanted them that way. Too much was at stake[56] – public safety and high professional standards – for weaknesses to be overlooked.
Yet, while performance standards were not relaxed, senior captains undergoing flight checks were treated by their colleagues with particular courtesy. Except by Vernon Demerest.
Demerest treated any pilot he was assigned to test, junior or senior to himself, in precisely the same way – like a naughty schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s presence. Moreover, in the headmaster’s role, Demerest was arrogant and tough. He made no secret of his conviction that no one else’s ability as a pilot was superior to his own. Colleagues who received this treatment raged silently, but had no choice but to sit and take it. Subsequently they vowed to one another that when Demerest’s own time came they would give him the toughest check ride he had ever had. They invariably did, with a single consistent result – Vernon Demerest gave a flawless performance which could not be faulted.
“Yes, it would be an easy flight tonight – for me,” Vernon Demerest smiled to himself again.
His thoughts returned to the present as the apartment block elevator stopped at the third floor. He stepped into the carpeted corridor and headed for the apartment which Gwen Meighen shared with a stewardess of United Air Lines. The other girl was away on an overnight flight. On the apartment door bell he tapped out their usual signal, his initials in Morse[57]… dit-dit-dit-dah dah-dit-dit… then went in, using the same key which opened the door below.
Gwen was in the shower. He could hear the water running. When he went to her bedroom door, she called out, “Vernon, is that you?” Even competing with the shower, her voice – with its flawless English accent, which he liked so much – sounded soft and exciting. He thought: “Small wonder Gwen had so much success with passengers.”
He called back, “Yes, honey.”
“I’m glad you came early,” she called again. “I want to have a talk before we leave.”
“Sure, we’ve time.”
“You can make tea, if you like.”
“Okay.”
She had converted him to the English habit of tea at all times of day.
He went to the tiny kitchen and put a kettle of water on the stove. He poured milk into a jug from a carton in the refrigerator, then drank some milk himself before putting the carton back.
He heard the shower stop. In the silence he began humming once again. Happily. O Sole Mio.
07
The biting wind across the airfield was as strong as ever, and still driving the heavily falling snow before it.
Inside his car, Mel Bakersfeld shivered. He was heading for runway one seven. Was the shivering due to the cold outside, Mel wondered, or to memory, which the scent of trouble a few minutes ago, plus the nagging reminder from the old injury of his foot, had triggered?
The injury had happened sixteen years ago off the coast of Korea when Mel had been a Navy pilot flying fighter[58] missions. Through the previous twelve hours he had had a premonition of trouble coming. Next day, Mel’s Navy F9F-5[59] had been shot down into the sea.
He managed a controlled ditching[60], but though unhurt himself, his left foot was trapped by a blocked rudder pedal. With the airplane sinking fast – an F9F-5 had the floating characteristics of a brick – Mel used a survival-kit hunting knife to slash desperately, wildly, at his foot and the pedal. Somehow, underwater, his foot came free. In intense pain, half-drowned, he got to the surface.
He had spent the next eight hours in the sea before he was picked up. Later he learned he had cut off the ligaments in front of his ankle.
In time, Navy medics repaired the foot, though Mel had never flown – as a pilot – since then. But at intervals the pain still returned, reminding him that long ago, as on other later occasions, his instinct for trouble had been right. He had the same kind of instinct now.
Handling his car cautiously, Mel was nearing runway one seven, left. This was the runway which, the tower chief had indicated, Air Trafifc Control would seek to use when the wind shifted.
At the moment, on the airfield, two runways were in use: one seven, right, and runway two five.
Lincoln International had five runways altogether. The longest and widest of the five was three zero, the runway now blocked by Aéreo-Mexican. This runway was almost two miles long and as wide as a short city block.
Each of the other four runways was half a mile or so shorter, and less wide.
Without ceasing, since the storm began, the miles of runways had been plowed, vacuumed, brushed, and sanded.
The sight was spectacular. Giant columns of snow cascaded to the right in arcs of a hundred and fifty feet. The arcs shimmered from the added color of twenty revolving beacons – one on the roof of each vehicle in the group.
Airport men called the group a Conga Line. It had a head, a tail, a body, and it progressed down a runway with the precision of choreography.
A convoy leader was the head. He was a senior foreman from airport maintenance and drove an airport car – bright yellow, like all other equipment in the Line. The leader had two radios and remained permanently in touch with the Snow Desk and Air Traficf Control. By a system of lights, he could signal drivers following – green for “speed up,” yellow for “maintain pace,” red for “slow down,” and flashing red for “stop.” He was required to carry in his head a detailed map of the airport, and must know precisely where he was, even on the darkest night, as now.
Then came a Snowblast, in echelon with the plows, six hundred roaring horsepower strong. A Snowblast cost sixty thousand dollars and was the Cadillac of snow clearance. With mighty blowers it swallowed up the snow which both plows piled, and hurled it in a herculean arc beyond the runway’s edge.
In a second echelon, farther to the right, were two more plows, a second Snowblast. After the plows and Snowblasts came the graders. The graders towed revolving brushes. The brushes swept the runway surface like monstrous yard brooms.
Next were sanders which spread sand out evenly. The sand was special. Elsewhere around the airport, on roadways and areas which the public used, salt was added to the sand as a means of melting ice. But never for aeronautical areas. Salt corroded metal, shortening its life, and airplanes were treated with more respect than cars.
Last in the Conga Line was an assistant foreman in a second car. His job was to insure that the line stayed unbroken. He was in radio touch with the convoy leader.
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Notes
1
взлётно-посадочная полоса три-ноль
2
Trans World Airlines – авиакомпания США
3
авиадиспетчерская служба
4
Air Traficf Control
5
здесь: снегоуборочные машины
6
United Airlines – крупная американская авиакомпания
7
предложил решить пассажирам
8
обычное дело
9
выруливая
10
рулёжная фара
11
рулёжная дорожка
12
«Подтверждаю» – типовое сообщение по связи
13
разрешение на руление
14
принимать меры для уменьшения шума
15
преследовать в судебном порядке
16
заглавные буквы
17
ради мира
18
он мог ещё успеть
19
(разг.) предок
20
в кои-то веки
21
это зависит не от меня
22
зал ожидания
23
ягнёнок, тушённый с овощами
24
ей лучше этого не делать
25
И тем не менее
26
гражданская версия стратегического военно-транспортного самолёта C-5A
27
пассажирские самолёты Boeing 747
28
Douglas DC-4 – американский четырёхмоторный поршневой авиалайнер. Был разработан и серийно производился предприятием Douglas Aircraft Company с 1938 по 1947 гг.
29
грузовые авиаперевозки
30
записка без заглавных букв
31
разворот на две страницы
32
Держите этого высокомерного парня подальше от меня
33
D.T.M. = District Transportation Manager
34
(юр.) оставление (семьи, жены)
35
ремонтный мастер
36
угарный газ
37
поспешно откусил большой кусок сэндвича
38
(амер., разг.) автослесарь
39
Вас понял (ответ при радиообмене)
40
микрофон (разг., сокр. от microphone)
41
диспетчер
42
подтвердил приём
43
скорость руления
44
Перехожу на приём (код радиообмена)
45
сокр. от dashboard – приборная панель
46
сокр. от will comply – «Вас понял. Выполняю»
47
Подтверждаю
48
Будьте на приёме
49
слышите меня
50
«привал»
51
удар ниже пояса
52
(разг.) напыщенное ничтожество
53
«Моё солнце» – неаполитанская песня
54
капитан первого ранга (с четырьмя золотыми нашивками на рукаве)
55
место второго пилота
56
поставлено на карту
57
азбукой Морзе
58
истребитель
59
модификация палубного истребителя «Пантера»; во время войны в Корее это был основной истребитель ВМС США.
60
Вынужденная посадка на воду