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

They say you couldn’t have done it better yourself.’

�I’m delighted to hear it,’ I said smiling.

He screwed on the cap and jumped down.

�Lovely day,’ he said, looking up. There were already two little planes in the air, and four more stood ready in front of the control tower. �Going far?’ he asked.

�Scotland,’ I said.

�That’s cheating.[53 - That’s cheating. – (разг.) Да ну, шутишь.]’ He swung the hose away and began to drag it along to the next aircraft.

�The navigation’s too easy. You only have to go west till you hit the A-1 and then fly up it.’

�I’m going to Islay,’ I smiled. �No roads, I promise.’

�Islay. That’s different.’

�I’ll land there for lunch and bring you back a bit of heather.’

�How far is it?’

�Two seventy nautical miles, about.’

�You’ll be coming back in the dark.’ It was a statement, not a question. He unscrewed the cap of Kilo November and topped up the tanks.

�Most of the way, yes.’

I did the routine checks all round the aircraft, fetched my padded jacket and my charts from the car, filed my flight plan, checked with the control tower for taxy clearance, and within a short while was up in the sky and away.

Air is curious stuff. One tends to think that because it is in visible it isn’t there. What you can’t see don’t exist, sort of thing. But air is tough, elastic and resistant; and the harder you dig into it the more solid it becomes.

Air has currents stronger than tides and turbulences which would make Charybdis look like bath water running away.

When I first went flying I rationalised the invisibility thing by thinking of an aircraft being like a submarine: in both one went up and down and sideways in a medium one couldn’t see but which was very palpably around. Then I considered that if human eyes had been constructed differently it might have been possible to see the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen we breathe as clearly as the hydrogen and oxygen we wash in.

After that I took the air’s positive plastic existence for granted, and thought no more about it.

The day I went to Islay was pure pleasure. I had flown so much by then that the handling of the little aircraft was as normal as driving a car, and with the perfect weather and my route carefully worked out and handy on the empty passenger seat behind me, there was nothing to do but enjoy myself.