"George R. R. Martin - With Morning Comes Mistfall (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

not be too pleasant."
Dubowski laughed. "Oh, come now, Sanders. Just because you live in a
castle doesn't mean you have to be so melodramatic."

"Don't laugh, Doctor. The wraiths have killed people before, you know."
"No proof of that," said Dubowski. "No proof at all. Just as there's no
proof of the wraiths themselves. But that's why we're here. To find proof. Or
disproof. But come, I'm famished." He turned to our robowaiter, who had been
standing by and humming impatiently.
Dubowski and I ordered rockcat steaks, with a basket of hot, freshly
baked biscuits. Sanders took advantage of the Earth supplies our ship had
brought in last night, and got a massive slab of ham with a half dozen eggs.
Rockcat has a flavor that Earth meat hasn't had in centuries. I loved
it, although Dubowski left much of his steak uneaten. He was too busy talking
to eat.
"You shouldn't dismiss the wraiths so lightly," Sanders said after the
robowaiter had stalked off with our orders. "There is evidence. Plenty of it.
Twenty-two deaths since this planet was discovered. And eyewitness accounts of
wraiths by the dozens."
"True," Dubowski said. "But I wouldn't call that real evidence. Deaths?
Yes. Most are simple disappearances, however. Probably people who fell off a
mountain, or got eaten by a rockcat, or something. It's impossible to find the
bodies in the mists. More people vanish every day on Earth, and nothing is
thought of it. But here, every time someone disappears, people claim the
wraiths got him. No, I'm sorry. It's not enough"
"Bodies have been found, Doctor," Sanders said quietly. "Slain horribly.
And not by falls or rockcats, either."
It was my turn to cut in. "Only four bodies have been recovered that I
know of," I said. "And I've backgrounded myself pretty thoroughly on the
wraiths."
Sanders frowned. "All right," he admitted. "But what about those four
cases? Pretty convincing evidence, if you ask me."
The food showed up about then, but Sanders continued as we ate. "The
first sighting, for example. That's never been explained satisfactorily. The
Gregor Expedition."
I nodded. Dave Gregor had captained the ship that had discovered
Wraithworld, nearly seventy-five years earlier. He had probed through the
mists with his sensors, and set his ship down on the seacoast plains. Then he
sent teams out to explore.

There were two men in each team, both well-armed. But in one case, only
a single man came back, and he was in hysteria. He and his partner had gotten
separated in the mists, and suddenly he heard a bloodcurdling scream. When he
found his friend, he was quite dead. And something was standing over the body.
The survivor described the killer as manlike, eight feet tall, and
somehow insubstantial. He claimed that when he fired at it, the blaster bolt
went right through it. Then the creature had wavered, and vanished in the
mists.
Gregor sent other teams out to search for the thing. They recovered the
body, but that was all. Without special instruments, it was difficult to find