"Harry Harrison - 50 in 50 - Fifty Stories in Fifty Years" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

If I need a line or any help, I'll surface over the astronaut, then you can bring the boat to me."
He turned on the oxygen and slipped over the side, the cool water rising up his body as he sank
below the surface. With a powerful kick he started towards the bottom, following the dropping line of the
buoy rope. Almost at once he saw the man, spread-eagled on white sand below.
Joze swam down, making himself stroke smoothly in spite of his growing excitement. Details were
clearer as he dropped lower. There were no identifying marks on the pressure suit, it might be either
American or Russian. It was a hard suit, metal or reinforced plastic, and painted green, with a single, flat
faceplate in the helmet.
Because distance and size are so deceptive under water, Joze was on the sand next to the figure
before he realized it was less than four feet long. Ho gasped and almost lost his mouthpiece.
Then he looked at the faceplate and saw that the creature inside was not human.
Joze coughed a bit and blew out a stream of bubbles: he had been holding his breath without realizing
it. He just floated there, paddling slowly with his hands to stay in a position, looking at the face within the
helmet.
It was still as a waxen cast, green wax with roughened surface, slit nostrils, slit mouth and large
eyeballs unseen but prominent as they pushed up against the closed lids. The arrangement of features was
roughly human, but no human being had skin this color or had a Pulpy crest, partially visible through the
faceplate, growing up from above the closed eyes. Joze stared down at the suit made up of some
unknown material, and at the compact atmosphere-regeneration apparatus on the alien's back. What
kind of atmosphere? He looked back at the creature and saw that the eyes were open and the thing was
watching him.
Fear was his first reaction, he shot back in the water like a startled fish then, angry at himself, came
forward again. The alien slowly raised one arm, then dropped it limply. Joze looked through the faceplate
and saw that the eyes were closed again. The alien was alive, but unable to move, perhaps it was injured
and in pain. The wreck of the creature's ship showed that something had been wrong with the landing.
Reaching under as gently as he could he cradled the tiny body in his arms, trying to ignore a feeling of
revulsion when the cold fabric of the thing's suit touched his bare arms. It was only metal or plastic,- he
had to be a scientist about this. When he lifted it up the eyes still did not open as he bore the limp and
almost weightless form to the surface.
"You great stupid clumsy clod of peasant, help me," he shouted, spitting out his mouthpiece and
treading water on the surface, but Dragomir only shook his head in horror and retreated to the point of
the bow when he saw what the physicist had borne up from below.
"It is a creature from another world and cannot harm you!" Joze insisted but the fisherman would not
approach.
Joze cursed aloud and only managed with great difficulty to get the alien into the boat, then climbed in
after him. Though he was twice Joze's size, threats of violence drove Dragomir to the oars. But he used
the farthest set of tholepins, even though it made rowing much more difficult. Joze dropped his scuba gear
into the bottom of the boat and looked more closely at the drying fabric of the alien space-suit. His fear
of the unknown was forgotten in his growing enthusiasm. He was a nuclear physicist, but he remembered
enough of his chemistry and mechanics to know that this material was completely impossible by Earth's
standards.
Light green, it was as hard as steel over the creature's limbs and torso, yet was soft and bent easily at
the joints as he proved by lifting and dropping the limp arm. His eyes went down the alien's tiny figure.
There was a thick harness about the middle, roughly where a human waist would be, and hanging from
this was a bulky container, like an oversize sporran. The suiting continued without an apparent
seamтАФbut the right leg! It was squeezed in and crushed as though it had been grabbed by a giant pliers.
Perhaps this explained the creature's lack of motion. Could it be hurt? In pain?
Its eyes were open again and Joze realized in sudden horror that the helmet was filled with water. It
must have leaked in, the thing was drowning. He grabbed at the helmet, seeing if it would screw off,
tugging at it in panic as the eyes rolled up towards him.