"Alan Dean Foster - Lost and Found" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

He felt better when he was fully dressed. Somehow, the thought of getting beaten up while stark naked
was far more unsettling. Not that it would matter to his doctor. Or to his friends, who upon his return and
reappearance in Chicago would torment him mercilessly for weeks with chorused fusillades of well-
meaning тАЬI told you soтАЩs.тАЭ

Fumbling in the dark, he found the fishermanтАЩs steel multitool heтАЩd brought with him and unfolded the
long blade. Sometimes just a show of resistance would be enough to put off potential assailants. It was
one thing to jump some poor tourist caught half asleep in the sack, quite another to confront a fully
awake 220-pound opponent holding a knife. If they had guns, however, he would just have to resign
himself to taking a beating.

More rustling noises, near the front of the tent this time. Reaching down, Walker picked up the compact
high-beam flashlight. Flash them in the eyes, startle тАЩem, and then stare them down, he thought rapidly.


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 LostandFound

They shouldnтАЩt be expecting it.

That the bent-over figure that quickly unzipped the tent flap and thrust its head inside was not expecting
to have a bright light shined in its eyes was made immediately clear by its reaction. It let out a startled
roar, covered both horizontally flattened eyes with the sucker-studded, flexible flaps that comprised the
forward third of its upper appendages, sharply retracted the membranous hearing sensor that protruded
from near the top of its conical skull, and jerked back out of the shelter.

Gaping open-mouthed at the unzipped entrance flap, Walker was somehow not reassured by the sudden
retreat of the intruder. He did, finally, remember to breathe.

тАЬWhat in the hell . . . ?тАЭ

It was not yet October. Therefore, it was still a while until Halloween. It did not matter. Whatever had
pushed the forepart of its outrageous self into his tent had not been in costume. You could tell these
things. Yet, it could not be real, either. So, if it was not real, then why was he shaking so badly that the
inside of the tent looked as if it was under attack by a flotilla of fireflies?

When his trembling hand finally steadied, so did the flashlight it clutched in a death grip. The firefly
armada resolved once again into a single circlet of illumination that waited patiently on the inner lining
of the pop-up shelter. Wishing he was at that moment anywhere else, even in Bug JumpтАЩs only tavern,
Walker extended a tentative hand toward the tent flap, pulled it aside, and peered out through the
resultant opening.

The creature whose unprotected eyes had taken the full brunt of his flashlightтАЩs LEDs was folded on the
ground next to the lakeshore. Standing over it was another of the nocturnal apparitions. This one was
holding a device that blinked some sort of dull brown beam rapidly off and on into its companionтАЩs face.
The standing being was slightly under seven feet tall and, assuming its density was not unlike that of a
terrestrial creature, between three and four hundred pounds in weight. Its enormous eyes were perhaps
two inches high and six or seven long. Nearly meeting in the center of the sloping face, where a nose
ought to have been, they curved almost around to the sides of the tapering head. Moonlight gleaming off