"Baxter, Stephen - Raft" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

by the pull of the Core, far below.
Rees reached the tree's hub and made his way along a rotating branch. Air
washed over him; he took care to avoid splinters from the branch's leading
edge. On reaching the stationary rim he hid himself in the foliage. There
was a smell of green, growing things.
Breathing hard, he surveyed his world.
The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. It was nearly the
end of a work shift, and people slid along the avenues to their homes,
skirting each others' irritating gravity pull. Many of them, Rees knew,
would be carrying rations from the supply machines that hulked around the
rim of the Raft. Others carried tools after a shift spent maintaining the
huge old supply devices.
Now a wave of children came rustling to greet the homecoming workers. A
party of Officers passed below Rees, their shoulder ribbons sparkling in
the shifting starlight.
Rees stood up now, balancing on the tree rim. With his head thrust out of
the foliage he could see how the Raft was suspended from a thousand
cable-tethered trees. The flying forest was a mass of stately rotation,
and it was adorned by a cloud of skitters that caught and softened the
starlight.
He craned his neck upwards, eyes raking the sky.
The ruddy air was filled with falling stars, an endless rain of them
tumbling down to the Core. Here and there he saw the tiny flashes that
marked the end of the stars' year-long lives. Far above him was the
Vanishing Point: the place the stars fell from. As he stared into the
Point he felt as if he were slowly rising; the stars spread out from the
Point as if the Raft were climbing a star-walled shaft.
And today there was a new spark right at the Point. A young star, he
wondered, poised to fall directly on them?
Relaxing his neck, he let his gaze roam once more over the Raft's scarred
bulk. Hidden somewhere beneath, of course, was the mysterious red glow of
the Core itself. But the only way to see the Core was through one of the
Observation Ports set in the floor of the Raft ...
And that reminded him what he was doing here.
He clutched tighter on his skitter. Whenever he'd gone near a Port
recently there had been a Scientist waiting to chase him away. Scientists!
Fat-bellied fools who acted to a man as if they owned the place ... and
without a doubt the worst of them all, the one who seemed to take the
greatest pleasure in harassing Rees and his friends, was Hollerbach.
Rees smiled tightly. Well, today old Hollerbach would get what was coming
to him -
Right on cue, Hollerbach approached grandly from the rim, the spectacles
he affected perched on the end of his nose.
There was a snort from Glover's hideaway. The old Scientist stopped
suddenly, his head cocked to one side. Rees felt his pulse quicken. If
that fool Glover had messed this up -
But the Scientist seemed to relax. He continued on his way, a slight smile
on his lips.
Rees breathed again. He fingered the skitter. He wanted to do this right.
He swayed a little, letting the gravitational fields of the Core, the