"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 01 - The Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)
"Can we help you? We can call an ambulance or something," Marco said.
"We can bandage that wound," Cassie said. "Jake, give me your shirt. We can tear it up and make bandages." Cassie's parents are both veterinarians and she's totally into animals. Not that this was an animal. Not exactly, anyway.
"NO!" I cried. "You can't die. You're the first alien ever to come to Earth. You can't die." I don't know why I was so upset. I just knew that way down deep inside, it hurt me to think of him dying.
"Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded.
The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side.
Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying.
"Different? How?" I said.
I will remember his answer forever.
He said,
CHAPTER 3
It was strange, the way we all just knew he was telling the truth. No one said "no way" or "you're making it up." We all just knew. He was dying, and he was trying to warn us of something terrible.
"Are you telling us they're already here on Earth?" Rachel demanded.
"Why hasn't anybody noticed them?" Marco said reasonably. "I think someone would have mentioned it at school."
I guess he couldn't think of a word to explain Yeerks, so he closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate. Suddenly a bright picture popped into my head. I saw a gray-green, slimy thing like a snail without its shell, only bigger, the size of a rat, maybe. It wasn't a pretty picture.
Suddenly we felt that blast of pain, straight from the alien. I could also feel his sadness. He knew his time was almost up.
"Are you saying they take over human beings?" Rachel asked. "People? These things take over their bodies?"
"Look, this is serious stuff," I said. "You shouldn't be telling us. We're just kids, you know. This is like something the government should know about."
"How can they do that?" Cassie wondered.
The alien seemed to smile with his eyes.
Another spasm of pain ripped through him, and we all knew he was nearly gone.
"No one is ever going to believe us," Marco said hopelessly. He looked at me and shook his head. "No way."
He was right. If these Yeerks were to wipe out the Andalite's ship, how on Earth would we ever convince people? They'd think we were either nuts or on drugs.
"I don't care if he thinks he's going to die, we have to try and help him," Rachel said. "We can get him to a hospital. Or maybe Cassie's parents . . . "
"What?"
We all looked at each other. Who was going to be the one to go inside the ship? Somehow we all seemed to agree it would be me. Actually, I didn't agree, but everyone else did.
"Go ahead," Tobias said. "I want to stay with him." He knelt beside the Andalite and placed a comforting hand on the alien's narrow shoulder,
I looked at the doorway into the spacecraft. I glanced at Cassie.
"Go ahead," she said, sending me a smile. "You're not scared."
She was wrong; I was plenty scared. But the way she smiled at me, I wasn't about to weasel out.
I walked over to the door of the ship and looked inside. It was surprisingly simple. It looked cozy, almost. Everything was a creamy color with rounded edges and shapes that tended to be oval. That was one of the things that helped me to spot the box so easily. It was sky blue and square, maybe four inches on each side. It seemed kind of heavy for being so small.
I stepped up into the ship. There was no chair, just a sort of open space where I guess the Andalite stood on his four hooves while he worked the few controls. There weren't a lot of buttons or anything. I wondered if the Andalite controlled the ship with his thoughts.
I quickly reached for the box and started to head back outside. But then something caught my eye. It was a small, three-dimensional picture Ч four Andalites, standing all together, looking like a strange gathering of deer with solemn faces. Two of them looked very small Ч kids. I realized that this-was a picture of the Andalite's family.
It filled me with sadness to think that here he was, dying, a million miles from his family. Dying because he had tried to protect the people of Earth. I felt a small flame of anger against the Yeerks, or Controllers, or whatever they were, for causing this.
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