"Thomas A. Easton - Alien Resonance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

breast said "Veilleux." "Just checking," he said. "See anything strange this
weekend?"
"Just fresh air and trees and trout. Ate them all, too." For some reason, Alec
said nothing about the egg. Ybarra did not try to add anything to his reply.
"Mind if I take a look?"
Alec felt a lurch of impending loss in his gut. Were there any shards in the
duffle? In the creels? Were they all in Ybarra's pockets? It was a struggle to
show no alarm, but he thought he managed. "Not at all."
Officer Veilleux peered into the space behind Alec's seat. He leaned into the
truck body, patting the tent sacks and sleeping bags and packs beneath the
canoe. Finally, he stood back and waved them on.
As they gathered speed again, Alec asked, "Why didn't we tell him?"
"Because he would have taken what's left of that egg away from us."
"I bet. But why?"
Ybarra shrugged. "We could have found out, but..."
"But some things are meant to stay mysteries." Alec made a motion as if to turn
the truck's radio off. It had not been on, and he had no intention of changing
its status. He was in no rush to renew contact with the world ahead of them.



II


Alec's small rented house, painted in shades of blue, sat near the edge of town
not far from the university. There were woods behind it, rimmed with blackberry
bushes. An apple tree shaded one back corner of the yard.
Inside, a round oak table held all the work he had yet to do to prepare for the
summer trimester. He made a face. That could wait. Better, he thought, to catch
up on what had been going on while he was gone.


file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Alien%20Resonance.txt (5 of 38) [12/28/2004 4:44:45 PM]
 file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Alien%20Resonance.txt

The television announcer was a dark-haired woman with a machine-gun delivery.
"The nation," she said, erectly serious, "remains mystified. Those colorful
giant eggs are being reported from all over the planet."
She vanished from the screen, replaced by a shot of gold and crimson and purple
eggs, dwarfing the feet of the humans beside them. Uniformed figures appeared
beside a pile that must have held hundreds of the things. Alec pulled his nugget
from his pocket and stared at it. That many? He had suspected there were at
least a few others, once they had met the roadblock. But so many? What were
they?
The announcer's voice went on. "There are thousands of them. They appear in
gardens and hedges, in woods and fields, in city parks and parking lots. They're
all the same size, but they come in all the colors of the rainbow. And they're
unbreakable, except..."
A young man appeared clad in mustache and white lab coat and hard hat, holding a
sledgehammer. He was saying, "We've tried, but they just won't break. But if we