"Jeff Hecht - The Saucer Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hecht Jeff)

community, Mr. Mills," Hester said as we emerged from the car. She led us to
the barn with a flashlight, unlocked the big, rusty padlock that held the two
doors shut, and opened one. Old red stain flaked from the wood.
I saw nothing in the musty interior until her flashlight beam swept
across a large mound in the middle, covered by a tarp. I followed the light to
a side wall, where wires led to a large electrical switch. Abigail switched it
on, and I heard a grinding noise above me. The roof cracked open along the
middle, and began sliding open to show the sky.
My eyes followed the beam back to the tarp. A thin dust of hay covered
the dark mound. "This is our landing craft, Mr. Mills. We bought this barn to
keep it safely hidden, but ready if we need it. We can take you for a ride."
Mutely disbelieving, I nodded, and watched them pull the tarp off a
genuine flying saucer at least 20 feet across. The outer surface was dull
black, like the radar-suppressing Stealth coating I'd tested back in my laser
days. A hatch popped open as we walked toward it.
Abigail climbed in first, then I, then Hester, whose flashlight gave
the only illumination until Abigail touched something. A dim, even light
diffused from overhead. Hester closed the hatch behind her. My eyes adapted
slowly.
"This is only a simple lander," said one Waverly. "It takes us from the
ground to our scout ship. We can do that tonight, but there is not enough time
to see our interstellar explorer."
Neither NASA nor George Lucas had ever made anything as impressive as
that lander. Multicolor displays covered the wall, like instruments in an
airplane cockpit, but the flat panels were much bigger than anything I'd ever
seen. I hadn't kept up with the state of the art, but this had to be beyond
it. The patterns changed as the two busied themselves, then began flashing.
They sat me in a chair, which clamped me in place, before sitting down
themselves. I heard a low mechanical hum, and felt my seat vibrate lightly.
Then the whole craft floated upward, as if someone had turned off the gravity.
It flew! With no wings or anything properly aerodynamic, it flew! I
gasped, my heart raced, and I shivered in an awe that I could not admit. I was
the Saucer Man; I was supposed to have been here and done this before. Trapped
in the chair, I could only watch.
The saucer drifted upward, through the open roof of the barn, and
hovered briefly while they checked the controls. Then we soared. I could feel
the motion, and see it through windows that showed the moon and stars. We flew
over the rectangular grid of dim street lights that was Lawrence. We flew
higher, over patterns of lights that marked larger towns. "Des Moines," they
announced over one; "Omaha," over a larger one we saw from higher in the sky.
We zoomed upwards, higher than I had ever flown in a plane, high above the
atmosphere itself. I saw vast areas of the rounded planet, like an astronaut
in space shuttle.
We approached another black object that I could detect only when they
showed me how it blocked part of the sky. I asked if anyone knew it was there,
and they said that its black coating hid it from radar and visible
observations. It was, I suppose, a kind of space station. The real aliens were
inside, but we couldn't visit them. Each race gave off toxins that would kill
the other, they said, and only the biological constructs that I called the
sisters could speak human language. Our craft docked so we could see a small