"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 01 - Caverns" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

down to display its communication membrane. Across the membrane it
wrote, in passable Throngornian, "A one-way ticket to Sol III, New York
City, please."
Due to the atmosphere, and the distance from its primary, wintertime
Throngorn II was noted for dimness. Thus the Trainee's eyes were naturally
huge, and it would be unfair to say that they widened with surprise. They
did, however, bulge. "I apologize, honored sir," she said hesitantly, "but you
are much too heavy to cast. There is a weight limitтАФ"
"Mistake mine," it scribbled. "Apologies also mine. Will return." Rippling
into reverse, it backed out of the building, slipping down the ramp into a
snow-crusted field of boulders. With regret over its waste of valuable
nutrients, it flushed all the rock and metal out of its system. It shrank as the
pile beneath it rose; it squatted on 300 tonnes of stone like a mad brooding
hen. But still it was some 87,000 kilograms overweight.
Sighing inside, it drained from its storage cells 99.5% of their fluidsтАж
steam rose on the winter wind, and ice crystallized almost audibly under the
slag heap. Vacuoles vanished, cell walls contracted; layers of spongy flesh
thinned and hardened. An hour later, the gastropodтАФnow a quadruped
with a coffin-shaped body that was almost all dry, dormant storage
meatтАФtottered up the ramp and again requested a ticket.
The Trainee nodded her approval. "Fifty FNC's, please. "
Elevating a forelimb with a hole in its end, the gastropod spat forth a
single orange-white bill. After sucking up its change, it headed for Fling
Booth 9, as the Trainee had indicated.
When it was inside, the Flinger on duty peered through the glass
window. "Are you ready?" he called out.
The gastropod, so bulkless as to be sapped of energy, darkened with
irritation as it showed the Flinger its membrane. "Yes," it scrawled abruptly.
"Brace yourself."
*PING*
Transition was always a time of frozen terror. One minute the gleaming
white tiles of the Fling Booth surrounded one; the next, utter blackness
dropped. It was true blackness, the absence of light (and the gastropod,
sensitive to both infrared and ultraviolet, was perhaps more oppressed by
this deprivation than most). Following hard on darkness' heels thundered
contradiction: the traveler was growing, swelling, inflating beyond the
galaxy's limits; at the same instant, it deflated, shrank, dwindled down to
subatomic size. For a tenth of a pulse it was both infinitely large and
infinitely smallтАФ and then came the tearing. It felt like the very molecules of
its body had rebelled, half straining to speed off in one direction, the rest
tugging in another. That lasted till the universe died of old age, though the
gastropod was certain (having been reassured by no less an expert than the
Far Being itself) that it was actually of no duration at all. Then tearing
became healing; its cells sang the joys of re-union. The contradiction
resolved itself with a return to normal size. Blackness fled from the
gleaming white tiles of a Flop Booth. Through the glass window in the
ceiling peeped a smooth, hairless face, one with two probable eyes, one
bi-holed protrusion, one orificeтАФ
"You okay?" called a voice in Terran.
Feebly, it tilted its forward end to the ceiling. "Yes," it wrote on its