"Joanna Russ - Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

INVASION
by Joanna Ross
____________________________________
Taken from: Year's Best SF 2
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Copyright ┬й 1997 by David G. Hartwell
ISBN 0-06-105746-0

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-30-02 [v1.0]




They were terrible.
The Doctor found one under the operating table in the hospital (impossible to tell its sex) that
regarded her suspiciously and then, as she reached for it, vanished with a pop! of inrushing air.
The Second-in-command discovered three of them between the sheets as he started to make the
bed in the quarters he shared with the Captain. The creatures rolled away from him, grinning, and
vanished.
An especially small oneтАФwho'd been in the swimming pool, it seemed, and who was dripping wet,
its yellow costume all soggyтАФmaterialized against the hand-woven tapestry on the cabin's wall, slid
down, and left a trail of water-blurred color behind it. It shrieked excruciatingly and vanished.
The Navigator walked into her study area and found two of them sitting on top of her antique
wooden bookcase. Normally a peaceful woman, even a bit shy, she threw herself at the intruders,
shouting "No!" only to receive a painful barrage of books in the face, most of which then rolled under the
bed as she grabbed for them, acquiring disc-destroying grit in the process. Several hit her on the
forehead, hard. When she was able to scramble out from under the bed, her hands full of them, the
intruders were gone.
One perched weightlessly on the Communicator's head as he was combing his hair. Two others
landed heavily in his lap. One said, "Comb my hair"; another, "Give us a kiss." The one sitting on his head
dropped into his lap, crowding the other two (who kicked and rocked for a few seconds, trying to get
the lap back for themselves alone) and asked, in an unexpectedly deep, hoarse voice, "Do you like
worms?"
The Communicator thought for a moment. Then he said, "Worms are fine in the soil of Botany Level
Two, but nowhere else."
Little number three looked in its overall pocket, sighed, its whole face expressing woe, and
vanished. Little number one-in-the-lap cried, "Comb my hair!" so he did, using the
mother-of-pearl-backed hair-pick that had been in his family for generations. Two rocked back and forth
on his lap, hummingтАФthey were actually fairly heavy littles, he decidedтАФand number one subsided into
dreaminess while having its wild, fuzzy, orange hair combed. The combing accomplished, the
Communicator thought for a minute or so while little number two sucked its thumb. Then he said,
carefully, "I'm going to tell you a wonderful story. Once there were three little people and they were just
like youтАФ"
The Engineer found that one of the creatures (a really young one) had crawled inside a ventilation
duct and was gnawing at the lining with a look of fascination on its pudgy features. An older one was
reaching for the fusion reactor controls. The Engineer was not one to act hastily or unthinkingly, even
when something threatened her engines, and she also had the great advantage of having been brought up
on a male-dominated planet as the eldest of nine. Stealthily she reached for the shelf near the
radiation-proof door, on which she kept items confiscated from tourists or staff, mostly food and some
gadgets her assistants had carried into the area, or rather had planned to carry, for she was down on