"Keith Fenwick - Skid 01 - A Planet Called Skid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fenwick Keith)

unfolding beneath them. A lone figure suddenly appeared on the screen, moving across an area
of organic material.
Intrigued by this lonely figure, for Skidians were never really alone, Myfair instructed the ship
to hover while he studied the potential candidate and its accompanying four-legged
companions.
"He'll do," Myfair decided impulsively. This offworlder had to know something about the
organic material over which he moved. He stole a quick glance over his shoulder at the others,
who were still arguing in the conference chamber, and activated the transporter beam to bring
the offworlder on board.
"What the bloody hell?" Just as Bruce had been about to give Punch a good kick in the ribs for
rolling in a nicely rotting sheep carcass at the top of the cliff something had grasped him by the
scruff of the neck and yanked him skyward.
One moment he was struggling across a paddock leaning into the near gale force winds to keep
his balance lashed by driving rain. The next he was here. Wherever and whatever here was.
For a moment Bruce decided he must have been blown off the cliff somehow and smashed his
head on something. Was he on his way to heaven? If it wasn't heaven then it must be a
hallucination of another kind. Was he still asleep? Had he just fallen over and bumped his head
on a rock?
The three dogs? What were they doing here? Surely they wouldn't have been stupid enough to
follow him off the cliff. They didn't look particularly happy though. At first they trembled and
whimpered fearfully, tails between their legs, their eyes rolling in their sockets. Then all three
of them tried unsuccessfully to climb up under his swandri. Finding the struggle beyond them,
they gave up and cautiously sniffed the floor instead.
Cop was the first to venture off the platform to investigate a ghostly apparition that was
approaching from the far end of the dimly lit room. The apparition solidified into the figure of a
man wearing a long white robe of some kind that brushed the floor as he moved.
Bruce tensed. His heart thumped wildly behind his ribs, so hard that he thought it might leap
from his chest, as the figure stopped several feet in front of him.
Bruce wondered if it was Saint Peter, whether he might indeed be in heaven. Cop sniffed,
whined, and then scuttled back to cower behind his master, resting his head against Bruce's
feet, peering suspiciously up at the man.
"Gidday." Bruce could not think of anything more intelligent to say off the top of his head, and
immediately cursed himself for sounding so idiotic. This bloke probably wouldn't understand a
word he said.
He shifted uncomfortably and tapped his foot in the puddle of water that had run off his swandri
and leggings while the figure continued to stare at him, distastefully twitching his nose.
Despite his pallid skin and dark blue rimmed eyes, Bruce thought he appeared quite human,
though he had never seen anybody with such pale skin before. Not even on the bare legs of
tourists fresh from a northern winter wandering down a beach.
And if he were in fact a man, he was a big man, standing well over two meters tall like a
basketball player or rugby lock with a hormone imbalance.
Bruce started to step backwards, but the man loomed over him and placed his hands on his
shoulders, drawing Bruce forward and brushing his lips over each cheek.
Yuk!" Bruce wiped his cheeks on the sleeve of his swandri. "What the?" He stepped forward
to avenge the insult, but was halted in mid stride by a raised hand.
"Welcome. Thank you for joining us here." Myfair greeted Bruce in the traditional manner of
Skid where visitors were shown every courtesy, no matter what the host really thought of his
guest. "My name is Myfair and I am at your service."
Cop took this opportunity of an apparently friendly greeting to leave the dubious safety of
Bruce's presence and begin an exploration of the room. He cocked his leg against a cabinet