"Steven E. McDonald - Event Horizon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Steven E)

There was something else here. The lights flickered and cast shadows, but
one of those shadows was not stationary. Floating.

Space is deep.

Turning without volition, without control. There was a figure at the helm
console, hung in the microgravity, tumbling gently. A man, in a flight suit
that seemed absurdly rumpled, the sleeves pushed back, indistinct darker spots
marring the fabric. The man's arms were flung wide, frozen in place, as though
his last act had been to fend something off... or, perhaps, to hold on to
something that refused to be held in place.

Gracefully, the frozen figure spun around. The man's face blurred from
shadow to Neptune's harsh'light. He had been perfectly preserved in this
environment, of course, that was one detail that could not be overlooked.

The eyes were gone, torn away, the eye sockets somehow blackened, as though
by cauterizing. Death had been traumatic and swift, the victim caught and
frozen in the act of screaming. Turning, the corpse drifted closer, the face
recognizable enough despite the mutilation.
Space is deep.

Plunging back to darkness, and then to gray reality, awake, sweating,
whimpering. Grasping, he found his handhold on reality in the shape of his
name: Dr. William Weir, disgraced creator of the lost Event Horizon, the stuff
of his nightmares. The name of the eyeless dead.



Chapter One

Dr. William Weir opened his eyes and gazed upon a gray universe. Once more
vented into pale reality without argument, vented into a mundane world that
was, in its own dreary way, as bad as the world that lived in his dreams.

Lying on his bed, sheets rumpled around his slender body, he stared at the
dimly seen ceiling of his studio apartment. This part of awakening had become
ritualistic over the years. The ceiling was his icon, his mandala, so lacking
in features that he had discovered that it helped him focus. Over the years
the ceiling had helped him find his way to one idea after another. Many
mornings had been spent lying awake, images and solutions tumbling through his
overactive brain while Claire ...

He turned his head, frowning as beads of sweat trickled into rivulets and
found their way into the lines and crags of his face. The dreams took their
toll on him, even when he failed to remember anything more than a sense of
unease. Once awake he could push the unease, even the terror, to the back of
his mind, burying it there beneath facts and figures.

He pushed himself up slightly, enough to reach the bedside light switch,