"James P. Hogan - Giants 1 - Inherit The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

He inched his arms upward to find purchase on the rock behind, then
braced them to thrust his weight forward over his legs. His knees trembled.
His face contorted as he fought to concentrate his remaining strength into his
protesting thighs. Already his heart was pumping again, his lungs heaving. The
effort evaporated and he fell back against the rock. His labored breathing
rasped over Koriel's radio.
"Finished...Can't move..."
 The blue figure on the skyline turned.
"Aw, what kinda talk's that? This is the last stretch. We're there,
buddy -- we're there."
"No -- no good...Had it..." Koriel waited a few seconds.
"I'm coming back down."
"No -- you go on. Someone's got to make it."
No response.
"Koriel..."
He looked back at where the figure had stood, but already it had
disappeared below the intervening rocks and was out of the line of
transmission. A minute or two later the figure emerged from behind the nearby
boulders, covering the ground in long, effortless bounds. The bounds broke
into a walk as Koriel approached the hunched form clad in red.
"C'mon, soldier, on your feet now. There's people back there depending
on us."
He felt himself gripped below his arm and raised irresistibly, as if
some of Koriel's limitless reserves of strength were pouring into him. For a
while his head swam and he leaned with the top of his visor resting on the
giant's shoulder insignia.
"Okay," he managed at last. "Let's go."
Hour after hour the thin snake of footprints, two pinpoints of color at
its head, wound its way westward across the wilderness amid steadily
lengthening shadows. He marched as if in a trance, beyond feeling pain, beyond
feeling exhaustion -- beyond feeling anything. The skyline never seemed to
change; soon he could no longer look at it. Instead, he began picking out the
next prominent boulder or crag, and counting off the paces until they reached
it. "Two hundred and thirteen less to go." And then he repeated it over
again...and again...and again. The rocks marched by in slow, endless,
indifferent procession. Every step became a separate triumph of will -- a
deliberate, conscious effort to drive one foot yet one more pace beyond the
last. When he faltered, Koriel was there to catch his arm; when he fell,
Koriel was always there to haul him up. Koriel never tired.
At last they stopped. They were standing in a gorge perhaps a quarter
mile wide, below one of the lines of low, broken cliffs that flanked it on
either side. He collapsed on the nearest boulder. Koriel stood a few paces
ahead surveying the landscape. The line of crags immediately above them was
interrupted by a notch, which marked the point where a steep and narrow cleft
tumbled down to break into the wall of the main gorge. From the bottom of the
cleft, a mound of accumulated rubble and rock debris led down about fifty feet
to blend with the floor of the gorge not far from where they stood. Koriel
stretched out an arm to point up beyond the cleft.
"Gorda will be roughly that way," he said without turning. "Our best way
would be up and onto that ridge. If we stay on the flat and go around the long