"Gordon R. Dickson - Danger-Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"I'll take it up by the head, here," said the senior. "You take the other
end. Got it? Lift! Now, carry it into the boat."
The junior backed away, up through the spaceboat's open lock, grunting
a little with the awkwardness of his burden.
"It feels slimy," he said.
"Nonsense!" said the senior. "That's your imagination."


Eldridge Timothy Parker drifted in that dreamy limbo between
awakeness and full sleep. He found himself contemplating his own name.
Eldridge Timothy Parker. Eldridgetimothyparker. Eldridge
TIMOTHYparker. ELdrlDGEtiMOthyPARKer. . . .
There was a hardness under his back, the back on which he was
lying--and a coolness. His flaccid right hand turned flat, feeling. It felt like
steel beneath him. Metal? He tried to sit up and bumped his forehead
against a ceiling a few inches overhead. He blinked his eyes in the
darkness--
Darkness?
He flung out his hands, searching, feeling terror leap up inside him. His
knuckles bruised against walls to right and left. Frantic, his groping
fingers felt out, around and about him. He was walled in, he was
surrounded, he was enclosed.
Completely.
Like in a coffin.
Buried--
He began to scream. . . .


Much later, when he awoke again, he was in a strange place that
seemed to have no walls, but many instruments. He floated in the center of
mechanisms that passed and repassed about him, touching, probing,
turning. He felt touches of heat and Cold. Strange hums and notes of
various pitches came and went. He felt voices questioning him.
Who are you?
"Eldridge Parker-Eldridge Timothy Parker-"
What are you?
"I'm Eldridge Parker-"
Tell about yourself.
"Tell what? What?"
Tell about yourself.
"What? What do you want to know? What-"
Tell about. . . .
"But I--"
Tell. . . .


. . . well, i suppose i was pretty much like any of the kids around our
town . . . i was a pretty good shot and i won the fifth grade seventy-five
yard dash . . . i played hockey, too . . . pretty cold weather up around our
parts, you know, the air used to smell strange it was so cold winter