JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 152 из 199A vulnerable place to leave such a valuable thing, but this was where I'd last seen it, ready to be loaded into the boat.
Sunlight could damage me in minutes, kill me in hours, but Carlos Wu's wonderful 'doc was no ordinary mall autodoctor. It was state of the art, smarter than me in some respects. It would cure anything the sun could do to me.
I pulled myself to my feet and took a few steps. Ouch! The coral cut my feet. The 'doc could cure that, too, but it hurt.
Standing, I could see most of the island. The center bulged up like a volcano. Fafnir coral builds a flat island with a shallow cone rising at the center, a housing for a symbiote, the lamplighter. I'd hovered the lander above the cone while belly jets scorched out the lamplighter nest until it was big enough to hold the lander.
Just me and the 'doc and a dead island. I'd have to live in the 'doc. Come out at night, like a vampire. My chance of being found must be poor if no passing boat had found me in these past four-plus months.
I climbed. The coral cut my hands and feet and knees. From the cone I'd be able to see the whole island.
The pit was two hundred feet across. The bottom was black and smooth and seven or eight feet below me. Feather had set the lander to melt itself down slowly, radiating not much heat over many hours. Several inches of rainwater now covered the slag, and something sprawled in the muck.
It might be a man … a tall man, possibly raised in low gravity. Too tall to be Carlos. Or Sharrol, or Feather, and who was left?
I jumped down. Landed clumsily on the smooth slag and splashed full length in the water. Picked myself up, unhurt.
My toes could feel an oblong texture, lines and ridges, the shapes within the lander that wouldn't melt. Police could determine what this thing had been if they ever looked; but why would they look?
The water felt good on my burned feet. And on my skin. I was already burned. Albinos can't take yellow dwarf sunlight.
A corpse was no surprise, given what I remembered. I looked it over. It had been wearing local clothing for a man: boots, loose pants with a rope tie, a jacket encrusted with pockets. The jacket was pierced with a great ragged hole front and back. That could only have been made by Feather's horrible ARM weapon. This close, the head … I'd thought it must be under the water, but there was no head it all. There were clean white bones, and a neck vertebra cut smoothly in half.
I was hyperventilating. Dizzy. I sat down next to the skeleton so that I wouldn't fall.
These long bones looked more than four months dead.
Sunlight could damage me in minutes, kill me in hours, but Carlos Wu's wonderful 'doc was no ordinary mall autodoctor. It was state of the art, smarter than me in some respects. It would cure anything the sun could do to me.
I pulled myself to my feet and took a few steps. Ouch! The coral cut my feet. The 'doc could cure that, too, but it hurt.
Standing, I could see most of the island. The center bulged up like a volcano. Fafnir coral builds a flat island with a shallow cone rising at the center, a housing for a symbiote, the lamplighter. I'd hovered the lander above the cone while belly jets scorched out the lamplighter nest until it was big enough to hold the lander.
Just me and the 'doc and a dead island. I'd have to live in the 'doc. Come out at night, like a vampire. My chance of being found must be poor if no passing boat had found me in these past four-plus months.
I climbed. The coral cut my hands and feet and knees. From the cone I'd be able to see the whole island.
The pit was two hundred feet across. The bottom was black and smooth and seven or eight feet below me. Feather had set the lander to melt itself down slowly, radiating not much heat over many hours. Several inches of rainwater now covered the slag, and something sprawled in the muck.
It might be a man … a tall man, possibly raised in low gravity. Too tall to be Carlos. Or Sharrol, or Feather, and who was left?
I jumped down. Landed clumsily on the smooth slag and splashed full length in the water. Picked myself up, unhurt.
My toes could feel an oblong texture, lines and ridges, the shapes within the lander that wouldn't melt. Police could determine what this thing had been if they ever looked; but why would they look?
The water felt good on my burned feet. And on my skin. I was already burned. Albinos can't take yellow dwarf sunlight.
A corpse was no surprise, given what I remembered. I looked it over. It had been wearing local clothing for a man: boots, loose pants with a rope tie, a jacket encrusted with pockets. The jacket was pierced with a great ragged hole front and back. That could only have been made by Feather's horrible ARM weapon. This close, the head … I'd thought it must be under the water, but there was no head it all. There were clean white bones, and a neck vertebra cut smoothly in half.
I was hyperventilating. Dizzy. I sat down next to the skeleton so that I wouldn't fall.
These long bones looked more than four months dead.