"Brunner, John - The World Swappers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brunner John)

He gathered himself in a single movement and tossed himself
languidly after the cigarette just as the sonic found the critical resonance
of the metal hull and the boat shivered into steaming fragments.
Immediately the heavy weight of the shielded propulsor dropped towards
the floor of the ocean, its automatic capsize guards going up with a
succession of sharp clicking noises. In this much water, it would hardly
be worth salvaging.

Feeling the brief wave of warmth from the shattered boat wash about
his body, Counce trod water and stared at the place where the spaceship
had been. Even with the guards up, the propulsor would have shed
enough radioactivity in the immediate vicinity to fog the detectors for a
while, so he was at liberty to go about the task of superoxygenating his
bloodstream with deep breaths before he needed to duck. They would,
he supposed, have shielded the underside of the ship as well as the
superstructure in case one of the local fishguards in his submersible
spotted it and remembered. However, from underneath was the logical
mode of approach - he couldn't fly.

Dodging a shoal of frightened fish bearing the Dateline Fisheries
brand on their dorsal fins, Counce began to swim towards the point at


which the ship had vanished. He reached the edge of the barrier sooner
than he had expected, and trod water again as he felt the tingling of the
blanking frequencies greet his outstretched fingertips. They'd set it for
maximum output, then - they weren't taking any chances. Except,
naturally, the ones they didn't know about.

He made a swift calculation. He had been under for six minutes three
seconds already, and the additional six minutes or so which it would take
him to negotiate the barrier would bring him perilously close to his safety
margin. He would have surfaced if he could, but the problem of
navigating through these screens partly in a liquid and partly in gas added
unnecessary complications to the job. From below was not just the logical
way - it was the only way.

He swung his mental compass, closed his eyes, and deliberately
committed himself to his own personal inertial guidance system. He
forced himself to disregard all sensory impressions except the changing
pressure of water on his skin and the position of the fluid in his
semicircular canals, telling him which way was up. Gravity was the one
thing he could expect to remain constant within the barrier; the ship was
on Earth, and Counce knew perfectly well that for the time being it was
meant to remain here, so that at least they would not be monkeying with
the value of g. But if he deviated from the straight path he was going to
be in trouble.

Exactly six minutes later he surfaced and opened his eyes to the
greenish light which was all that soaked past the barrier - the light from