"MacLeod, Ian R - Tirkiluk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

October 1st

Looking out through the hut window now. Venus is shining through the teeth of
white mountains in the halo of the sun where the wind shrieks and growls, and
the Milky Way twines like a great river across the deep blue sky, striated by
bands of interstellar dust, clearer than I've ever seen before.

I seem to have come a long way, just to make some sense of my life.

October 12th

The Eskimo encampment is gone. Climbed up from Point B to the edge of the valley
this morning when the full moon was shining, and my old prewar Zeiss binoculars
could make everything out through the clear sharp air.

No moon now. The edge of the sky is a milky shade in the comer that hides the
sun, and the wind is up to force 6. There were snow flurries yesterday, but
somehow their absence today makes everything all the more ominous.

October 16th

Three days of dreadful weather -- only managed one trip up to Point B, and the
balloon was out of the question.

Then this. Been out for hours, slowly freezing, totally entranced by Aurora
Borealis, the Northern Lights. Like curtains of silk drawn across the sky. A
faintly hissing waterfall of light. Shifting endlessly. Yet vast. There are no
words.

I think of charged particles streaming from the sun, swirling around the earth's
magnetic field. Even the science sounds half-magical. I must --

An interruption. A clatter outside by the storage shed that sounded too
purposeful to be just the wind. And the door was open -- forced --flapping to
and fro. Must say I felt afraid, standing there with the wind screaming around
me in the flickering auroral half light. I've re-fixed it now (cut my thumb, but
not badly) and I've got the little .22 rifle beside me as I sit at this desk, as
though that would be any use. But must say I feel lonely and afraid, as these
great hissing curtains of light sway across the sky beyond my window.

But -- being practical -- it simply means that some of the Eskimos haven't gone
south, and that they have light fingers (although I can't find anything missing)
just as I was warned by the trainers at Godalming. Suppose this is my first real
test.

October 20th

Out today in better weather taking readings in the pallid light before my
fingers froze, I saw a ragged human figure about quarter of a mile down the