"Alan Dean Foster - The Tessellated Tetrahexahedral Yellow Rose of Texas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

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THE TESSELLATED TETRAHEXAHEDRAL YELLOW ROSE OFTEXAS



By Alan Dean Foster




"Sir, I've got something very peculiar here."

The lieutenant assumed an irascible expression and walked over. Mobler was not a particularly pleasant
man, due in part to an unfortunate childhood disease that had given his skin the form and consistency of a
golf ball's surface. This pebbled epidermis would turn color according to his emotions. At present both
cheeks resembled obese anemic strawberries.

Despite this, he was respected, if not especially well liked, by the enlisted men and women who served
under him. This was sad because Lieutenant Mobler was competent and intelligent. It wasn't his fault he
looked like a sniffly adolescent instead of a soldier.

It was dark in the long, sealed room. Illumination came from bulbs, purposely, dim set in the ceiling
overhead and from the numerous dials, switches, and screens that lined both walls. Smartly uniformed
people sat intent before the instruments. When they conversed at all, it was in whispers. A natural
somberness kept talk soft and furtive, not orders. The purpose behind this room was well known to all
who worked in it, and this itself was enough to inspire reverence and quiet.

Now that businesslike attentiveness had been broken, and Mobler would know the reason why.
Standing behind the young electronics spec. seven, he peered over his shoulder at the circular screen in
front of them. It was lit from within by a rich fluorescence the color of pea soup. Right away he noted the
cause of the specialist's comment without detecting the declared peculiarity of it.

"So you've got a track,Davis. What's so startling about that?"

Grimacing uncertainly, the specialist pointed to several small gauges set into the console at the screen's
lower left. Mobler leaned close to read them, a movement shoving his prominent Adam's apple taut
against neck skin. Then he frowned, turning the tiny craterlets on his face linear.

"It's not possible," he finally announced. His voice was surprisingly deep.

"That's just what I thought, sir." The specialist stared now not at the screen but at his superior. He was
waiting for orders but hoping for an explanation.

Mobler turned, looked down the long row of seats. His tense words were unnaturally loud in that
funereal atmosphere. "Colson, Matthews. SpecialistDavis's instrumentation insists it's got a small object
reentry coming in from the west on irregular descent at three thousand kilometers per."