"Jack McKinney - Kaduna Memories" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

One of the machines waved an arm. At the same time, the chest cavity of the machine on legs opened
and the tall creature reached a hand in to retrieve something.

"Your doom," a monitor announced with a malicious laugh, and Thaish's node peers shrieked.

Nasst took a hop in their direction only to find himself face to face with the machine on legs. The thing
was continuing its shuffling approach, one hand plunged into its inner workings, gripped on something
unseen but undoubtedly horrible. Nasst backed away from it with three short hops and commanded it to
stop. The machine seemed about to comply when it suddenly threw itself at the Inheritor Major and
landed face-first on Ship Nasst's deck with a loud crashing sound, an issue of foul-smelling smoke, and a
fountain of electrical sparks.

Thaish, peering between the legs of one of his node peers, saw Nasst give a start and cocoon.

An instant later, half of Station Six was deanimate and the rest were well on their way. The same must
have been occurring in other sectors as well, Thaish realized, for Ship Nasst was already powering
down.

Thaish urged himself to submerge, but his fear was too great. He could scarcely maintain a simple Level
Two trance. And now the machine things were closing on him, narrowing the jaws of outstretched
pincer-equipped hands, as if to take hold of something.

Nugget sat wide-eyed and wordless at Larissa's station, filled with things to say, but too stunned to
speak.

The Excalibur's first view of the aliens had come when the robots had left the pod of their own accord
and moved into the massive ship's docking hold; before that, the intense light in the hold had prevented
the probe's external cameras from transmitting a clear visual.

"Oh my God," Larissa said when Chaplin's cameras had focused on the tallest of the XTs.

Nugget's own response had a more scatological bent to it.

Initially he was certain that the Excalibur had chanced upon a mutant breed of superintelligent,
air-breathing fish. But that was only until Chaplin lengthened the shot and the being's bilaterally
symmetrical torso, mantis arms, and powerful-looking, reverse-articulated legs had come into viewтАФall
of it sheathed in a lavender, form-fitting environment suit, with utility belt, leg pouches, and ankle clasps of
what looked to be gold alloy.

There was still that large-eared head and fish-eyed face, however, rough-skinned and honey-gold on its
dorsal surface, blue-green below. And the twin feelers resembling slender blue stamens that right-angled
from the corners of a bulbous-lipped mouth.

Stretched to full length the thing might have measured close to six feet, but Chaplin's computer calculated
the alien's height at just a shade over five one, from the feathery tips of the gill-like structures that
emerged from its ears to the four green-rimmed suction digits of its outsize feet. The bony fingers of the
thing's diminutive hands were likewise tipped in green.

"Carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere," Larissa commented breathlessly, eyes fixed on the readouts.
"Artificial gravity of some sort. A shade under Earth-normal."