"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 3 The Lazarus Effect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The burning smells were stronger now. They frightened him. Duque wondered if
he should say something. Mostly, he did not talk; his nose got in the way. He
could whistle through his nose, though, and his mother understood. She would
whistle back. Between them, they understood more than a hundred whistle-words.
Duque wriggled his forehead. This uncurled his thick, knobby nose and he
whistled -- tentative at first to see whether she was near.

"Ma? Where are you, Ma?"

He listened for the unmistakable scuff-slap, scuff-slap of her bare feet on the
soft slick deck of the raft.

Burning smells filled his nose and made him sneeze. He heard the slaps of many
feet out in the corridor, more feet than he had ever before heard out there, but
nothing he could identify as Ma. There was shouting now, words Duque did not
know. He sucked in a deep breath and let go the loudest whistle he could
muster. His thin ribs ached with it and the vibration made him dizzy.

No one responded. The hatch beside him remained closed. No one plucked him out
of his twisted covers and held him close.

Despite the pain of the smoke, Duque peeled back his right eyelid with the two
nubs on his right hand and saw that the room was dark except for a glow against
the thin organics of the corridor wall. Dull orange light cast a frightening
illumination over the deck. Acrid smoke hung like a cloud above him, tendrils
of its oily blackness reaching downward toward his face. And now there were
other sounds outside added to the shouting and the slap-slap of many feet. He
heard big things dragging and bumping along his glowing wall. Terror held him
curled into a silent lump under the covers of his bunk.

The burning smells contained a steamy, bitter flavor -- not quite the sticky-
sweet of the time when the stove scorched their wall. He remembered the charred
melt of organics opening a new passage between their room and the next one along
the corridor. He had poked his head through the burned opening and whistled at
their neighbors. The smells now were not the same, though, and the glowing wall
did not melt away.

A rumbling was added to the outside sounds. Like a pot boiling over on the
stove, but his mother was not cooking. Besides, it was too loud for cooking,
louder even than the other corridor noises. Now, there were screams nearby.

Duque kicked off his covers and gasped when his bare feet touched the deck.

Hot!

Abruptly, the deck pitched, first backward and then forward. The motion lurched
him face-first through the bulkhead. The hot organics of the wall stretched and
parted for him like a cooked noodle. He knew he was on the outer deck but
stumbling feet kept him too busy covering his head and body with his arms. He
could not spare a hand to open his good eye. The hot deck burned his knees and