"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 5 - Sentenced To Prism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

silicoflagellata
washed down from above. Thoughts of predation began to worry Evan. He was in
no
danger from the cascalarian or the brightly colored snowflakes, but he knew
that
Prism was home also to creatures which would gladly take him apart. Not for
meat, but for the valuable store of minerals his body contained. The human
body
was a mine of highly prized trace elements. So was his suit. A big scavenger
would draw no distinction between man and clothing and would devour both with
equal pleasure.
His body was particularly rich in iron, potassium, and calcium. A mine. My
mine
is mine, he thought, too tired to laugh. The sun continued to raise the suit's
internal temperature, despite the cascalarian's shade. He blinked against his
own sweat. He had to do something soon.
No. He had to do something sooner than that, because something was coming
toward
him. He was sure his vision wasn't that far gone. Whatever was approaching
wasn't very big, but then, it wouldn't have to be to do some real damage,
given
his helpless semicomatose state.
He couldn't see it clearly because the special discrim-inatory visor of his
suit
helmet wasn't functioning prop-erly. The visor was necessary because many of
Prism's lifeforms were organized according to fractal instead of normal
geometry. They tended to blur if you stared at them for very long, as the
human
eye sought patterns and organization where none existed. Fractals existed
some-where between the first and second dimension or the sec-ond and the
third.
No one, not even the mathematicians, was quite sure.
It didn't matter so long as you looked through the Hausdorf lenses. They were
built into the visor of his suit helmet. Which was broken. As a result,
fractally orga-nized figures didn't look quite right when viewed through
unadjusted transparencies. Like the whatever it was that was slowly coming
toward him.
It was more than merely disconcerting. You could go crazy. Fortunately he was
too tired to care. So very tired.
He could feel himself drifting, falling asleep or fainting, he wasn't sure
which. Not that it mattered.
He only hoped that the alien entity stalking his motion-less form would start
by
eating the damn suit instead of its helpless occupant.

Chapter Two

The storm raged as Evan strode briskly down Korbyski Avenue. He was enjoying
it.
Powerful thunderstorms were a frequent visitor to this part of Sam-stead. The