"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 26 - The Attack" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

"Man, I thought there were a lot of salespeople at Nordstrom's, but this
is nuts. I'll take care of this. I know how to get rid of pushy
salespeople." Rachel stepped out front, hands on her

36 hips. "We're just here to use the bathroom. Can you tell me where the
ladies' room is?"

The Iskoort stared, goggle-eyed. Several of them wandered away. The
others continued staring at us, waiting to see if we'd loosen up and do
some business.

I looked at Cassie and we both sighed at the same time.

"Now what?" she wondered. "What do we do? Stand around till someone
tries to kill us?"

I looked around, trying to get a grip on this bizarre place. There was
no making sense of the structure itself. Our floor was a roomy one. At
least a hundred feet separated our floor from the floor above. Back from
the edge the small buildings began. They looked like clusters of igloos:
blue and gold and white and green and red. Some were jumbled into piles
several layers tall. Others were freestanding.

The Iskoort themselves came and went, in and out of the colored igloos,
up and down the twisted, arched stairways connecting floors. They all
looked busy. All in a hurry.

They were not the most frightening-looking race we'd ever encountered,
but they were definitely not even slightly human.

They had heads like vultures, thrust forward on long necks. The necks
protruded from shoulders that were a sort of oval platform, flat across.

37 From the shoulders dropped two arms, one on each side, each arm
jointed three times, ending in a hand made up of one very long,
tentacle-like finger, and two smaller, hooked, sharp-clawed fingers.

They walked in a way that made it seem they were crawling on their
knees. Backward. Not that they went backward. They went forward. They
had two thick legs, maybe two and a half feet long. Then came what
looked like knees, followed by calves that extended forward, lying flat
against the ground. Those ended in feet, each with a single long
prehensile toe and two smaller claws jutting from the sides of thick pads.

Their midsection was bare of clothing and looked weirdly like an
accordion - an accordion made of veined, pink flesh. It moved, wheezing
out a sort of running commentary on their thought-speak.

It was the sound of a whine. A grating, annoying whine that rose or
fell, depending, evidently, on how excited or mad or agitated they were.