"Richard A." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

of
the structured protuberances. Shoten quiesced the cyberbiots to mere
maintenance level of Khons, leaving only the receptors and telemeters
warm, then asked the others to prepare to exit.
Njord Freyr and Sri Gomati slipped breathers over their heads and
shoulders. Shoten ordered a variety of internal filtration
modifications
within the recirculation system that provided life support. They took
readings from Khons's external sensors, slid back hatches, made their
way
from Khons, stood facing what, it was now obvious, were relics of
incredible antiquity.
Abreast, the three moved toward the ruins: Njord on motorized,
gyrostabilized cyborged wheel assemblies; Shoten Binayakya rumbling on
tread-laying gear, stable, efficient; Sri Gomati striding left foot,
right
foot, organic legs encased in puff-jointed pressure suit like some
anachronistic caricature of a Bipolar Technocompetitive Era spaceman.
They halted a few meters from the first row of structures. Like the
crater
rims, the walls, columns, arches were weather-rounded, tumbled,
softened.
A metallic-telescoping tentacle whiplashed out from the hub of one of
Njord's cyborg-wheels. A crumbled cube of some now-soft stone-like
material fell away to ashes, to dust.
Njord turned bleak silver eyes to the others. "Once, perhaps..."
"Come along," Gomati urged, "let's get to exploring these ruins!"
Excitement colored her voice. "There's no telling what evidence they
may
contain of their builders. We may learn whether these worlds and their
inhabitants originated in our own system or whether they came from --
elsewhere."
At Gomati's final word she turned her face skyward, and the others
followed suit. It was the worldlet Thog's high noon or the equivalent
thereof. The sun was so remote -- sixteen billion kilometers, twice as
far
as it was from Pluto at the latter's aphelion and 120 times as distant
as
it was from Earth -- that to the three standing on the surface of Thog,
it
was utterly lost in the star-dotted blackness.
But Yuggoth itself hung directly overhead, obscenely bloated and
oblate,
its surface filling the heavens, looking as if it were about to crash
shockingly upon Khons and the three explorers, and all the time
pulsing,
pulsing, pulsing like an atrocious heart, throbbing, throbbing. And now
Thog's twin worldlet, dubbed Thok by the female crew member, swept in
stygian silhouette across the tumultuous face of Yuggoth, Thok's black
roundness varied by the crater-rims casting their deep shadows on the