"Wilson-ToTheVectorBelong" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robin)

He zips, rinses his hand, and leads his prisoner out to the little Ford electric
with the red INS logo parked in the bar plug-in. The Chief Federal Marshal has
gambled that. a long unstructured and recorded debriefing will get them maximum
information on the alien; they were in the saloon a long time. The car battery
had been low to begin with and now it takes everything off his debit card to pay
out the charge.

He toggles on and the line of Oakland policemen parts for them--Lindstrom notes
they are now reinforced by California Highway Patrol officers and, he is sure,
federal units somewhere off in the darkness--and forms an escort for them up the
deserted Nimitz Freeway. Beyond them are the TV cameras with their low-light,
long lenses recording them in detail and a news-hungry populace that will have
Al for dinner every night for weeks. And probably me too, Lindstrom thinks.

And then Mars lights flicker as far ahead as he can see across the Bay Bridge
toward the temporary isolation facility on Turk Street where he is to deliver
Al. Nothing has so home in on him the enormity of the event as the fact that the
Bay Bridge has been cleared of traffic during rash hour. As he drives, his
passenger avidly peering into the approaching canyons of San Francisco,
Lindstrom thinks about his pension and his precarious position.

How in hell am I going to get out of this one?

JUST AFTER lunch the next day, Wednesday, Lindstrom stands at a lectern before a
dozen scientists in a darkened room in what was once the Saks Fifth Avenue store
in the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Here the Stanford Research
Institute is housing the just-formed Extraterrestrial Task Force, already
referred to by its staff as "ET-EF." A few people wear white or green lab coats.
Lindstrom has the only necktie. In his left hand is a control button; in his
right a laser pointer. On the screen behind him is a brilliantly illuminated
full-figure video freeze of Al nude, side and front. His musculature is
spectacular, bordering on but not quite unhuman; there is a thoroughly human
look of embarrassment and resignation on his face.

"I represent the Immigration and Naturalization Service," says Lindstrom, "and I
have been asked to report to you on the disposition of the extraterrestrial that
we have in custody.

"As you may know, Al or Earl is the fifth extraterrestrial reported anywhere in
the world. Two have been noted in Third World settings -- in Indonesia and
Brazil-- and both have disappeared, or at least evaded custody. Three have been
found in the Bay Area since early December. Two have returned almost immediately
to the organism or device which brought them, which we've been calling the
doughnut. This is a toroidal biological mass that we have been unable to inspect
closely enough to know much about. In each case, the doughnut appears without
traceable access a hundred meters off the western extremity of an Oakland pier
at an altitude of two meters above the decking. When the doughnut reaches the
end of the pier, the -- uh -- alien drops to the deck encased in a placenta-like
material and engages in a rapid series of actions to free himself. In the first