JК
World Of Ptavvs :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 119 из 127He heard the message all the way through, and he heard it repeated, and repeated. Garner sounded more urgent than he had ten minutes ago.
The hurricane was almost below him now. He looked straight down into the eye.
From one of the murky fires in the rim of the eye, a tongue reached inward.
It was like the first explosion, the one he'd watched through the telescope. But this wasn't the telescope!
The whole plateau was lost in multicolored flame in the first twenty seconds. With the leisurely torpor of a sleepy ground sloth on a cold morning, the fire stood up and reached for him. It was fire and ice, chunks of ice big enough to see, ice burning as it rose in the clutch of the height and might, a blazing carnivore reaching to swallow him.
Viprin race. Bowed skeletal shapes like great albino whippets seemed to skim the dirt surface of the track, their jet nacelle nostrils flaring, their skins shining like oil, racing round and round the audience standing breathless in the center of the circle. The air was thick with Power: thousands of Thrintun desperately hurling orders at their favorites, knowing perfectly well that the mutant viprin didn't have the brains to hear. Kzanol on one of the too-expensive seats, clutching a lavender plastic cord, knowing that this race, this race meant the difference between life as a prospector and life as a superintendent of cleaning machinery. He would leave here with commercials to buy a ship, or with none.
Larry dropped it. It was too late in Kzanol's life. He wanted to remember much earlier. But his brain seemed filled with fog, and the Thrintun memories were fuzzy and hard to grasp. As Kzanol/Greenberg he had had no trouble with his memory, but as Larry he found it infuriatingly vague.
The earliest thing he could remember was that scene of the sunflowers.
He was out of cigarettes. The pilot might have some in his pocket, but Larry couldn't quite reach it. And he was hungry; he hadn't eaten in some ten hours. A gnal might help. Definitely one would help, for it would probably kill him in seconds. Larry tore a button from his shirt and put it in his mouth. It was round and smooth, very like a gnal.
He sucked it and let his mind dissolve.
Three ships rested on the other side of what remained of Cott's Crescent. In the control bubbles the pilots sat motionless, waiting for instructions and thinking furious, futile thoughts. In the fourth… Kzanol's eating tendrils stood away from his mouth as he probed.
It was rather like probing his own memory of the crash. A brightly burning wind, a universe of roaring, tearing flame and crushing shocks.
The hurricane was almost below him now. He looked straight down into the eye.
From one of the murky fires in the rim of the eye, a tongue reached inward.
It was like the first explosion, the one he'd watched through the telescope. But this wasn't the telescope!
The whole plateau was lost in multicolored flame in the first twenty seconds. With the leisurely torpor of a sleepy ground sloth on a cold morning, the fire stood up and reached for him. It was fire and ice, chunks of ice big enough to see, ice burning as it rose in the clutch of the height and might, a blazing carnivore reaching to swallow him.
Viprin race. Bowed skeletal shapes like great albino whippets seemed to skim the dirt surface of the track, their jet nacelle nostrils flaring, their skins shining like oil, racing round and round the audience standing breathless in the center of the circle. The air was thick with Power: thousands of Thrintun desperately hurling orders at their favorites, knowing perfectly well that the mutant viprin didn't have the brains to hear. Kzanol on one of the too-expensive seats, clutching a lavender plastic cord, knowing that this race, this race meant the difference between life as a prospector and life as a superintendent of cleaning machinery. He would leave here with commercials to buy a ship, or with none.
Larry dropped it. It was too late in Kzanol's life. He wanted to remember much earlier. But his brain seemed filled with fog, and the Thrintun memories were fuzzy and hard to grasp. As Kzanol/Greenberg he had had no trouble with his memory, but as Larry he found it infuriatingly vague.
The earliest thing he could remember was that scene of the sunflowers.
He was out of cigarettes. The pilot might have some in his pocket, but Larry couldn't quite reach it. And he was hungry; he hadn't eaten in some ten hours. A gnal might help. Definitely one would help, for it would probably kill him in seconds. Larry tore a button from his shirt and put it in his mouth. It was round and smooth, very like a gnal.
He sucked it and let his mind dissolve.
Three ships rested on the other side of what remained of Cott's Crescent. In the control bubbles the pilots sat motionless, waiting for instructions and thinking furious, futile thoughts. In the fourth… Kzanol's eating tendrils stood away from his mouth as he probed.
It was rather like probing his own memory of the crash. A brightly burning wind, a universe of roaring, tearing flame and crushing shocks.