"Henry Kuttner - Clash by Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

Kane managed to touch one of the emergency buttons.
The shell was, of course, jammed, but a few of the segments slid aside, admitting a gush of acrid
sea water. For a moment they struggled there, fighting the crosscurrents till the air had been
displaced. Scott, peering through cloudy green gloom, saw Kane's dark shadow twist and kick out
through a gap. He followed.
Beneath him the black hulk of the boat dropped slowly and was gone. His head broke surface, and he
gasped for breath, shaking droplets from his lashes and granting around. Where was Kane?
The boy appeared, his helmet gone, sleek hair plastered to his forehead. Scott caught his eye and
pulled the trigger on his life vest, the inflatable undergarment which was always worn under the
blouse on sea duty. As chemicals mixed, light gas rushed into the vest, lifting Scott higher in
the water. He felt the collar cushion inflate against the back of his head- the skull-fitting
pillow that allowed shipwrecked men to float and rest without danger of drowning in their sleep.
But he had no need for this now.
Kane, he saw, had triggered his own life vest. Scott hurled himself up, searching for signs of
life. There weren't any. The grey-green sea lay desolate to the misty horizon. A half mile away
was a mottled chartreuse wall that marked the jungle. Above and beyond that dim sulphurous red lit
the clouds.
Scott got out his leaf-bladed smatchet, gesturing for Kane to do the same. The boy did not seem
worried. No doubt this was merely an exciting adventure for him, Scott thought wryly. Oh, well.
Gripping the smatchet between his teeth, the captain began to swim shoreward. Kane kept at his
side. Once Scott warned his companion to stillness and bent forward, burying his face in the water
and peering down at a great dim shadow that coiled away and was gone - a sea snake, but, luckily,
not hungry. The oceans of Venus were perilous with teeming, ferocious life. Precautions were
fairly useless. When a man was once in the water, it was up to him to get out of it as rapidly as
possible.
Scott touched a small cylinder attached to his belt and felt bubbles rushing against his palm. He
was slightly relieved. When he had inflated the vest, his tube of compressed gas had automatically
begun to release, sending out a foul-smelling vapour that permeated the water for some distance
around. The principle was that of the skunk adjusted to the environment of the squid, and
dangerous undersea life was supposed to be driven away by the Mellison tubes; but it didn't work
with carrion eaters like the snakes. Scott averted his nose. The gadgets were named Mellison
tubes, but the men called them Stinkers, a far more appropriate term.
Tides on Venus are unpredictable. The clouded planet has no moon, but it is closer to the Sun than
Earth. As a rule the tides are mild, except during volcanic activity, when tidal waves sweep the
shores. Scott, keeping a weather eye out for danger, rode the waves in toward the beach, searching
the strip of dull blackness for signs of life.
Nothing.
He scrambled out at last, shaking himself like a dog, and instantly changed the clip in his
automatic for high explosive. The weapon, of course, was watertight - a necessity on Venus. As
Kane sat down with a grunt and deflated his vest, Scott stood eyeing the wall of jungle thirty
feet away. It stopped there abruptly, for nothing could grow on black sand.
The rush and whisper of the waves made the only sound. Most of the trees were liana-like, ekeing
out a precarious existence, as the saying went, by taking in each other's washing. The moment one
of them showed signs of solidity, it was immediately assailed by parasitic vines flinging
themselves madly upward to reach the filtered sunlight of Venus. The leaves did not begin for
thirty feet above the ground; they made a regular roof up there, lying like crazy shingles, and
would have shut out all light had they not been of light translucent green. Whitish tendrils
crawled like reaching serpents from tree to tree, tentacles of vegetable octopi. There were two
types of Venusian fauna: the giants who could crash through the forest, and the supple, small
ground-dwellers- insects and reptiles mostly- who depended on poison sacs for self-protection.