"Charles L. Harness-The Araqnid Window" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

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8. The Creature
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 It was morning, and he was barely awake when he heard the scream. He squirmed from his sleeping
bag and grabbed the pack. Even as he ran out of the tent he began fumbling in the side pocket that held
the pistolet. "Coret! I'm coming!"
But there were no more screams. Nothing, until he reached the edge of the pool where Coret had
gone for her morning bath.
He saw her at the same instant he got the gun out. She was naked, and running and stumbling up the
path away from him. There was something horrid and bristly on her back.
He stood there transfixed for the briefest fraction of a second, as the color left his face. "My God," he
whispered. But within the time it took him to set the pistolet to "stun,' his wife had disappeared around
the bend of the path.
He picked up the pack by one strap and dashed off after her.
He cursed himself for letting her go down to the pool without him. But yesterday it had all seemed
perfectly safe. He had evidently missed a crucial life form. And the omission might well kill his wife.
Coret had now vanished around a turn in the path. But when Thorin arrived there, seconds later, he
saw that it was more than a turn. It was a fork. The path branched off to both the right and the left. And
another thing. The main path had been open overhead. But the forks were roofed over with some sort of
plastic monofilament.
Coret had taken one of the paths. But which one?
He pulled a handlight from the pack and shone it down each of the paths in turn. He could see nothing,
except more of this strange garlanding filament. He would have to chance one or the other. He turned
again to the right-hand fork.
And now he noticed something strange. It was an odor. Traces of Coret's perfume were coming from
the right-hand path! This was the one, of course. And he was about to dash down this passage, when by
chance his eye fell on the soft soil floor of the other path. And there was an incomplete impression of a
human foot. Just the ball of the left foot. It had to be Coret, running. And the next footprint would be a
couple of meters into the left-hand tunnel. But something... someone (the creature?) wanted him to think
otherwise, and in fact had immense skills and technology for persuading him. As witness the scent. The
realization stunned him. Definitely, the left. But how then could he account for the delicate traces of
jasmine wafting eerily from the right-hand fork? A pang of fear shot through his intestines. It was so
violent that he bent over for a moment. The... thing...that possessed Coret was emerging as a fantastically
cruel and intelligent adversary. Was it possible that it had already got into Coret's cerebral cortex? And
even if the creature knew, in some unexplained way, that Coret used a certain perfume, how had it
recreated it? Especially from a different tunnel?
The intimations were... appalling. But he refuse to think about it. He had to get moving.
He picked the bag up and started into the left branch. And then he stopped suddenly. Something was
hanging from the filament-network. The skeleton of a small winged creature. It had apparently got stuck
there, and then something had eaten it. Or most of it. One of the wings, fairly intact, had fallen half a
meter to the floor, where it was again stuck in the felted mass. And a couple of meters farther on, a
pig-size skeleton was netted to the floor. And beyond that, another. The place was full of bones. Animals
had wandered in here, and they had been caught in these strands. And then something had eaten them.
He picked up a dead tree branch from the pathside and jabbed it into one of the strands. It stuck
instantly. He pulled at it. The strand yielded a few centimeters, then firmed up. He pulled at the branch
with all his strength. His efforts served only to force it into contact with other strands. It was held so