"Keith Fenwick - Skid 03 - Skid 3" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fenwick Keith)

an upmarket new housing subdivision, just before all everybody moved in.
"Where is everyone?"
"You mean there's nobody here?" Mitch asked.
"Well what does it look like Mitch, do those robots over there," Bruce
pointed to a service crew that seemed to be tidying up a small park," look
like people to you?"
"Do you need to be so rude Bruce?" Sue asked coming to Mitch's aid. It
infuriated her how Bruce always seemed to expect people to understand what was
obvious him. "Perhaps they're on holiday Mitch," she suggested.
Bruce guffawed at the very idea. Sue was sure that the dog called Cop
sniggered at her and gave her a knowing look. She thought for half a minute
that the dog could understand what they were saying but then dismissed the
idea. Bruce she knew wasn't beyond creating an elaborate ruse just for fun.
Who ever heard of a talking dog?
"Who ever heard of a brainy female?" Sue heard the words as clearly as if
they had been spoken. She looked for Bruce but he was too far away now and her
gaze rested on Cop.
"I always thought you were a strange dog," she said.
"You don't know how strange," Cop said trotting away.
Raele was beginning to worry. What had happened to the craft that had
been parked at the space port? They couldn't just have vanished. The service
crews must have parked them somewhere else. Raele hoped they had been parked
somewhere else. He had been planning to leave his patrol craft at the space
port and use a smaller craft for the short journey to Aotearoa but now decided
that he'd better go in the bigger craft so that he could escape the planet if
he needed to one. As if parking it at Aotearoa would be totally secure.
"This is um, Inel's office isn't it? " Bruce asked as Raele led them into
an empty room.
"Yes."
Bruce was quite looking forward to meeting the old boy again and was
stunned to find that like most of the rest of the Skidians he was dead.
Raele showed the computer history that had dutifully recorded the events
of the past few months on Skid which left his offworld audience speechless.
"I don't believe it, surely some of them survived."
"Some of them did," Raele replied," but not very many," he added without
elaborating.
"I thought the city was wrecked? " Mitch asked.
"It was, but the service crews have almost rebuilt them, they are
operating as they always have," Raele replied, not having any idea how the
service crews operated. Like everything else on the Skid he had always known
they were and had been for all time. He guessed that once he had a chance to
work his way through all of Inel's secret archives he might find the answer,
if he lived that long as the record base was enormous.
For a moment he wished his old friend Yarad was still alive, he would
have known what to do, would have been in rapture over getting access to these
records. Sadly Yarad had been disinfected by Raele himself when he had
destroyed the nest of subversives at Aotearoa on Inel's orders.
To Bruce and Sue who had experienced Skid as it was the scale of the
disaster was beyond their comprehension. Mitch, who was almost totally
disorientated by this stage, didn't know what to believe. Though what he could