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

ugly dirty part of it. You were pure. Now you areтАФ"
"Murderers," Itin said, and the water ran down from his lowered head and streamed away into the
darkness.
 Rescue Operation
"Pull! Pull steadily . . . !" Dragomir shouted, clutching at the tarry cords of the net. Beside him in the
hot darkness Pribislav Polasek grunted as he heaved on the wet strands. The net was invisible in the
black water, but the blue light trapped in it rose closer and closer to the surface.
"It's slipping ..." Pribislav groaned and clutched the rough gunwale of the little boat. For a single
instant he could see the blue light on the helmet, a faceplate and the suited body that faded into
blackness, then it slipped free of the net. He had just a glimpse of a dark shape before it was gone. "Did
you see it?" he asked. "Just before he fell he waved his hand."
"How can I know? The hand moved, it could have been the net, or he might still be alive." Dragomir
had his face bent almost to the glassy surface of the water, but there was nothing more to be seen. "He
might be alive."
The two fishermen sat back in the boat and stared at each other in the harsh light of the hissing
acetylene lamp in the bow. They were very different men, yet greatly alike in their stained, baggy trousers
and faded cotton shirts. Their hands were deeply wrinkled and callused from a lifetime of hard labor,
their thoughts slowed by the rhythm of work and years.
"We cannot get him up with the net," Dragomir finally said, speaking first as always.
"Then we will need help," Pribislav added. "We have anchored the buoy here, we can find the spot
again."
"Yes, we need help." Dragomir opened and closed his large hands, then leaned over to bring the rest
of the net into the boat. "The diver, the one who stays with the widow Korenc, he will know what to do.
His name is Kukovic and Petar said he is a doctor of science from the university in Ljubljana."
They bent to their oars and sent the heavy boat steadily over the glasslike water of the Adriatic.
Before they had reached shore, the sky was light and when they tied to the sea wall in Brbinj the sun was
above the horizon.
Joze Kukovic looked at the rising ball of the sun, already hot on his skin, yawned and stretched. The
widow shuffled out with his coffee, mumbled good morning and put it on the stone rail of the porch. Ho
pushed the tray aside and sat down next to it, then emptied the coffee from the small, long-handled pot
into his cup. The thick Turkish coffee would wake him up, in spite of the impossible hour. From the rail
he had a view down the unpaved and dusty street to the port, already stirring to life. Two women, with
the morning's water in brass pots balanced on their heads, stopped to talk. The peasants were bringing in
their produce for the morning market, baskets of cabbages and potatoes and trays of tomatoes, strapped
onto tiny donkeys. One of them brayed, a harsh noise that sawed through the stillness of the morning,
bouncing echoes from the yellowed buildings. It was hot already. Brbinj was a town at the edge of
nowhere, located between empty ocean and barren hills, asleep for centuries and dying by degrees.
There were no attractions here, if you did not count the sea. But under the flat, blue calm of the water
was another world that Joze loved.
Cool shadows, deep valleys, more alive than all the sun-blasted shores that surrounded it.
Excitement, too: just the day before, too late in the afternoon to really explore it, he had found a Roman
galley half-buried in the sand. He would get into it today, the first human in two thousand years, and
heaven alone knew what he would find there. In the sand about it had been shards of broken amphorae,-
there might be whole ones inside the hull.
Sipping happily at his coffee he watched the small boat tying up in the harbor, and wondered why the
two fishermen were in such a hurry. They were almost running, and no one ran here in the summer.
Stopping below his porch the bigger one called up to him.
"Doctor, may we come up? There is something urgent."
"Yes, of course." He was surprised and wondered if they took him for a physician.
Dragomir shuffled forward and did not know where to begin. He pointed out over the ocean.