"Foster, Alan Dean - Splinter of the minds eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Rising, he scrambled back to the cockpit and retrieved his walking stick, then returned hurriedly to his prone position on the wing and extended it. "Lean toward me," he urged her again. "Threepio, you and Artoo hold tight or I'll go in with her."

"Don't worry sir," Threepio assured him. Artoo added a whistle.

She was up to her waist now. On the first try she missed the pole. The second time her fingers locked around it, were joined by her other hand.

Luke wrapped both hands around his end of the stick and sat up on the wing, leaning back. His feet slid and scraped on the smooth metal. "Artoo, Threepio... pull!"

Having secured a firm grip on her, the earth was reluctant to yield its prize. Every muscle in his body taut, Luke struggled to heave and to conjure the Force simultaneously. He tried to put all of his weight behind his arms, behind his desperate pull.

A tired sucking noise sounded, and the Princess lurched forward. Luke allowed his exhausted arms a brief respite and hyperventilated while he had the chance.

"You can play toy engine later," the Princess admonished him. "Pull _now_."

Momentary anger gave him enough energy to pull her the rest of the way clear. Reaching down, he gave her a hand up and then they were both sitting on the edge of the wing.

Covered from the ribs down in a packing of green-gray mud and pieces of what looked like dried straw, the Princess appeared decidedly unregal. She pushed futilely at the mud, which was drying rapidly to the consistency of thin concrete. She said nothing, and Luke knew anything he might venture would not be terribly well received.

"Come on," he suggested simply. Taking up his walking stick, he moved to the back side of the wing. Leaning over, he probed at the ground, which displayed no inclination to eat his stick. But still he kept one hand on the wing edge when he stepped off. His feet sank, but only half a centimeter into the spongy loam. Yet the earth here looked no different from the quickclay that had almost taken the Princess.

She dropped down easily beside him and soon they were traveling through intermittent patches of half-familiar vegetation. Branches and bushes blocked tired legs and occasional thorns tore hopefully at them, but Luke's assumption that the ground beneath the taller growths was the firmest held true with gratifying consistency. Even the weighty 'droids didn't sink into the muck.

From time to time as they hiked along, the Princess would dab or push disgustedly at her lower body, which was now solidly caked with the gook she'd slid into. She remained unusually quiet. Luke couldn't tell whether her silence was due to a desire to conserve her strength or embarrassment at her present situation. He tended to think the former. To his knowledge, being embarrassed was not something she was subject to.

Frequently they would pause, turn circles, and then match up pointer alignment on their tracoms to insure they were still marching toward the beacon site.

"Even if it is an automatic station," he remarked several days later, in an effort to cheer her, "somebody put it down here and so they have to maintain it. However infrequently. I saw some pretty big ruins near the place we set down. Perhaps natives are still living in them or they might be empty, but the beacon _could_ be for the use of a xenoarcheological research post."

"That's possible," she admitted brightly. "Yes... that would also explain why the beacon's not listed. A small scientific outpost could be temporary!"

"And recent," Luke added, excited by the plausibility of his own supposition. Just talking about such a possibility made him, made them both feel better. "If that's the case, then even an automated station that's only used on occasion ought to contain an emergency shelter and survival provisions. Heck, there might even be a subspace planetary relay for contacting Circarpous IV when the scientific team is operating here."

"A cry for help would be a poor way for me to announce my presence," the Princess observed, brushing at her dark hair. "Not," she added quickly, "that I'm going to be particular. I'll settle for arriving in a medical cocoon."

They walked on in silence for awhile before another question entered Luke's mind. "I still wonder, Princess, what caused our instruments to go _crazy_. That enormous volume of rising free energy we passed through... bolts jumping from sky to ship and ship back to sky again... I've never seen anything like that before."

"Nor have I, sir," commented Threepio. "I thought I might go mad."

"Neither have I," admitted the Princess thoughtfully. "And I've never read of a natural phenomenon like it. Several colonized gas giants have bigger storms, but never with so much color. And big thunderheads are always involved. We were above the thick cloud layer when it happened. Still," she hesitated, "the whole thing seemed almost familiar, somehow." Artoo beeped his agreement.

"You'd think whoever established that homing beacon in this area would also have put a message in the transmission warning ships away from the danger."

"Yes," the Princess agreed. "Hard to imagine a scientific expedition, or any other kind, being that negligent. The omission, it's almost criminal." She shook her head slowly. "That effect... I can almost remember something like it." A diffident smile, then, "My head's still full of the conference."

It should be, Luke thought, full of one thing onlyЧmaking it to that homing beacon and hoping there was more there than just a pile of machinery. What he said was, "I understand, Princess."

Not the Force, but a more ancient, more highly developed sense in man half convinced him they were being watched. He found himself turning rapidly to scan the trees and mist behind them and at each side. Nothing looked back at him, but the feeling refused to go away.

Once she spotted him peering hard at a dank copse. "Nervous?" It was part question, part challenge.