"John D. MacDonald - Flaw" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

fear. An alert operator had caught the fast shape as it had slammed flaming
down through the atmosphere to land forty miles from the base in deserted
country making a crater a half-mile across.

тАЬIt is believed that the object was a meteor,тАЭ the voice of the
announcer said. тАЬRadar screens picked up the image and it is now known
that it was far too large to be the Destiny II arriving ahead of a schedule.тАЭ

It was then that I took a deep breath. But the relief was not real. I was
only kidding myself. It was as though I was in the midst of a dream of terror
and could not think of magic words to cause the spell to cease.

After breakfast I was ill.

The meteor had hit with such impact that the heat generated had
fused the sand. Scientific instruments proved that the mass of the meteor
itself, nine hundred feet under the surface was largely metallic. The
telescreens began to prattle about invaders from an alien planet. And the
big telescopes scanned the heavens for the first signs of the returning
Destiny II.

The thought began as a small spot, glowing in some deep part of my
mind. I knew that I had to cross the forty miles between the base and the
crater. But I did not know why I had to cross it. I did not know why I had to
stand at the lip of the crater and watch the recovery operations. I felt like a
subject under post-hypnotic influenceтАФcompelled to do something without
know-ing the reason. But compelled, nevertheless.

One of the physicists took me to the crater in one of the base
helicopters after I had made the request of him in such a way that he could
not refuse.

Eleven days after the meteor had fallen, I stood on the lip of the
crater and looked down into the heart of it to where the vast shaft had been
sunk to the meteor itself. Dr. Rawlins handed me his binoculars and I
watched the mouth of the shaft.

Men working down in the shaft had cut away large pieces of the body
of the meteor and some of them had been hauled out and trucked away.
They were blackened and misshapen masses of fused metal.

I watched the mouth of the shaft until my eyes ached and until the
young physicist shifted restlessly and kept glancing at his watch and at the
sun sinking toward the west. When he asked to borrow the binoculars, I
gave them up reluctantly. I could hear the distant throb of the hoist motors.
Something was coming up the shaft.

Dr. Rawlins made a sudden exclamation. I looked at the mouth of the
shaft. The sun shone with red fire on something large. It dwarfed the men
who stood near it.