"Norton, Andre - Time Traders II" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

the next level.
He was too dazed to realize the meaning of the crumpled bulkheads. There was a spur of bare rock
under his hands as he edged over and around twisted metal. The moans were now a gobbling,
burbling, almost continuous cry as he reached his goal--a small cabin still intact.
For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there, afraid that he could not make the last
effort, raise his almost inert bulk up to the point where he could reach the Redax release. For a second
of unusual clarity he wondered if there was any reason for this supreme ordeal, whether any of the
sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a ship of the dead.
His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he braced himself and brought his left
hand up. He could not use any of the fingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy weights. But he lurched
forward, swept the unfeeling cold flesh down against the release in a gesture which he knew must be
his final move. And, as he fell back to the floor, Dr. Ruthven could not be certain whether he had
succeeded or failed. He tried to twist his head around, to focus his eyes upward at that switch. Was it
down or still stubbornly up, locking the sleepers into confinement? But fog drifted between; he could
not see it--or anything else.
The light in the cabin flickered and went out as another circuit in the broken ship failed. It was
dark, too, in the small cubby below which housed the two cages. Chance, which had snuffed out
nineteen lives in the space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the mountain side. Five yards
down the corridor the outside fabric of the ship was split wide open, the crisp air native to Topaz
entering, sending a message to two keen noses through the combination of odors now pervading the
wreckage.
And the male coyote went into action. Days ago he had managed to work loose the lower end of
the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind had told him that a sortie inside the ship was valueless.
The odd rapport he'd had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keep him to the
old role of cunning deception, which in the past had saved countless of his species from sudden and
violent death. Now with teeth and paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his
mate, that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils--a wild world, lacking the taint
of man-places.
He slipped under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front of the female's cage. One
forepaw caught in the latch and pressed it down, and the weight of the door swung against him.
Together they were free now to reach the corridor and see ahead the subdued light of a strange moon
beckoning them on into the open.
The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered behind as he trotted forward, his ears a-
prick with curiosity. Their training had been the same since cub-hood--to range and explore, but
always in the company and at the order of man. This was not according to the pattern she knew, and
she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell of the ship was offensive and the puffs of
breeze from outside enticing. Her mate had already slipped through the break. Now he barked with
excitement and wonder, and she trotted on to join him.
Above, the Redax, which had never been intended to stand rough usage, proved to be a better
survivor of the crash than most of the other installations. Power purred along a network of lines,
activated beams, turned off and on a series of fixtures in those coffin-beds. For five of the sleepers--
nothing. The cabin which had held them was a flattened smear against the mountain side. Three more
half-roused, choked, fought for life and breath in a nightmare that was mercifully short, and
succumbed.
But in the cabin nearest the rent through which the coyotes had escaped, a young man sat up
abruptly, staring into the dark with wide-open, terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for purchase against
the smooth edge of the box in which he had lain and somehow got to his knees. Weaving weakly back
and forth, he half fell, half pushed to the floor where he could stand only by keeping his hold on the
box.
Dazed, sick, weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his own sensations. There were