"Arinn Dembo - Sisterhood Of Skin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dembo Arinn)

extremely
low temperature, and even in full gear a man is not likely to survive for more
than five minutes overboard-- also, we were making at least thirty knots, and
he
might very well have been sucked into the static envelope and crushed before
we
could pull him out of the drink.

He seemed to see something in the sea beneath him. He lost a toe grip and he
was
suddenly hanging by one hand from the bowsprit, dangling over the swirling
water; on deck his father and shipmates jumped up and down in silent glee--a
tribe of victorious chimpanzees dressed in men's clothes. From the foc's'le I
saw what they could not: the pale shape, skimming fast just under the
translucent green surface--I reached for the controls of the forward ice
cannon,
but I was much too slow.

The silkie reared from the water like a golden-bronze geyser. In the flood
lights the men on deck saw it at last, all four meters of the enormous flexing
body completely clear of the chop, dancing backward on its tail . . . reaching
for young Jones with long, slender flippers open like arms. The monitors did
not
catch his shriek of terror when its body struck him; twirling him around on
the
pivot of his wrist like a pig squealing over the slaughtering trough; in the
tapes you only see his open mouth, gaping wide for a soundless scream.
It caught him, one limb over his shoulder and the other around his chest -- it
hugged him like a girl leaping on to her lover's back, wanting him to carry
her
-- and sank its muzzle into the muscle layered over his collar bone, tusks
shearing through tendons, shattering bones. For a moment, his arm heroically
supported them both. The silkie's weight was so tremendous that the arm ripped
free at the shoulder before his grip could weaken enough to drop him into the
sea.

The elder Jones lunged over and over against the men restraining him, howling,
clawing at them; he would have gone overboard if they had lost hold of him.
Several cubic centimeters of thorazine were required before he could be
quieted.
It was not the best drug for the purpose, but it was handy in the psych
cabinet
and I had no time for subtleties; it took six men just to throw him down the
stairs into the lab.

I would have liked to try and trace the silkie: not possible Jones distracted
me
for a few crucial minutes, and this ocean smothers our maximum sonar output
within three hundred meters of the ship -- our loudest shout is lost in the
roar