"Robert Reed - The Caldera of Good Fortune" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

am certain they will have seen to that detail.тАЭ

тАЬWho saw to what?тАЭ

The creatureтАЩs gaze fixed on a distant point.

Crockett asked the car door to close, but nothing happened.

Then Doom began to retrieve his hand, and with a firm, half-loud
voice, he said, тАЬMy good friend, I am sorry for your involvement in this.тАЭ

тАЬSorryтАФ?тАЭ Crockett began.

And then the world turned to fire and a searing golden light.

****

4
Drifting back into consciousnessтАФin that instant when misery and clarity
were roughly balancedтАФCrockett decided that the caldera had erupted.
Where else would the flash of light come from? How else could his body
have been flung hard against the floor? But then he gently set his gloved
hand against his worst acheтАФthe top of his headтАФand discovered that the
insulated hood was missing, and his long golden hair was missing, and a
palm-sized patch of the scalp had been burnt down to the hard bone. A
thousand emergency systems were awake, throwing their talents into
protecting the brain and knitting new flesh. Adrenalin and fancier stimulants
enlarged his senses, slowing time to a contemplative crawl. Crockett wasnтАЩt
scared, much less panicked. He felt alert and focused and incapable of
fear, absorbing his surroundings with curiosity and a powerful, intoxicating
detachment.

A focused blast had punctured the cable car, destroying the door and
then the far end. The wind blowing up the valley was drifting through the
gutted car and then out again, carrying away the final traces of smoke and
burnt flesh. Doom lay in a corner, limp and headless. Whatever had
knocked Crockett to the floor had struck the alien with its full force,
evaporating tough tissues and the skull, and whatever lay beneath.

Was the brain lost?

Was his client dead?

A pragmatic voice asked how this was possible. The slow wet
eruption of the caldera couldnтАЩt produce the energies necessary to kill.
Maybe the rising steam and falling snow had produced some exotic
species of ball lightning. But even the most murderous species of
meteorology couldnтАЩt produce this kind of disaster, he told himself.

Really, this resembled a military-grade weaponтАФ