"Walter M. Miller - The Hoofer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

plunged into something that went squelch and swallowed the foot past the ankle. He fell forwa
into a heap of sand, and his foot went deeper into the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging forehead on his arms, cursing softly and crying. Finally he roll
over, pulled his foot out of the mess, and took off his shoes. They were full of mudтАФstick
sandy mud.
The dark world was reeling about him, and the wind was dragging at his breath. He fell ba
against the sand pile and let his feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled his toes. He was laughi
soundlessly, and his face was wet in the wind. He couldn't think. He couldn't remember where
was and why, and he stopped caring, and after awhile he felt better.
The stars were swimming over him, dancing crazily, and the mud cooled his feet, and the san
was soft behind him. He saw a rocket go up on a tail of flame from the station, and waited for t
sound of its blast, but he was already asleep when it came. .
It was far past midnight when he became conscious of the dog licking wetly at his ear an
cheek. He pushed the animal away with a low curse and mopped at the side of his face. He stirre
and groaned. His feet were burning up! He tried to pull them toward him, but they wouldn't budg
There was something wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly around in the night. Then he remembered where he was, close
his eyes and shuddered. When he opened them again, the moon had emerged from behind
cloud, and he could see clearly the cruel trap into which he had accidentally stumbled. A pile
old boards, a careful stack of new lumber, a pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps of fresh-turn
earth, and a concrete mixerтАФwell, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled, but his feet wouldn't budge. In sudden terror, he tried
stand up, but his an-kles were clutched by the concrete too, and he fell back in the sand with
low moan. He lay still for several minutes, considering carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was locked in a vise. He tugged even more desperately at his rig
foot. It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and clawed at the rough con-crete until his nails tore and his fingerti
bled. The sur-face still felt damp, but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hookey began licking at his scuffed fingers. He shouldered the do
away, and dug his hands into the sand-pile to stop the bleeding. Hookey licked at his face, pantin
love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted a short distance away, circled, and came back to crouch dow
in the sand directly before Hogey, inching forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry sand and cursed be-tween his teeth, while his eyes wander
over the sky. They came to rest on the sliver of lightтАФthe space stationтАФrising in the we
floating out in Big Bottomless where the gang wasтАФNichols and Guerrera and Lavrenti and Fa
And he wasn't forgetting Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced him.
Keesey would have a rough time for a whileтАФrough as a cob. The pit was no playground. T
first time you went out of the station in a suit, the pit got you. Everything was falling, and you f
with it. Everything. The skeletons of steel, the tire-shaped station, the spheres and docks an
nightmare shapesтАФall tied together by umbilical cables and flexible tubes. Like some cra
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a black ocean with its tentacles bound together by driftin
strands in the dark tide that bore it.

Everything was pain-bright or dead black, and it wheeled around you, and you went nuts tryin
to figure which way was down. In fact, it took you months to teach your body that all ways we
down and that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive sound in the wind, and froze to listen.
It was a baby crying.