"Timothy Zahn - Manta's Gift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

The skin was covered with dozens of ridges and protrusions of various sizes and shapes, like a
snowfield that had been whipped by the wind into odd drifts. Some of the lumps were low and flat,
others long and narrow, sticking as far as eight or nine meters out from the surface. Like tree trunks,
perhaps, whose branches had been stripped off.


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Timothy%20Zahn%20-%20Manta's%20Gift.htm (9 of 298) [10/18/2004 3:39:27 PM]
Manta's Gift

No, he decided. Not like tree trunks. More like torpedoes or rockets pointed the wrong way on their
launching pads.

Abruptly, he caught his breath. Like torpedoes? "Scotto..."

"What?" Chippawa asked.

"That lump out there," Faraday said slowly. "The tall one, dead center. What does it look like to
you?"

"Like a lump," Chippawa said, a hint of impatience in his voice. "Give me a hint."

"Remember the fellow with the big eye?" Faraday said. "Wasn't he shaped like that?"

"Yes, butтАФ" Chippawa broke off, leaning closer to the window. "But that's the same skin that's on
everything else," he said. "The predator's skin. Isn't it?"

"Sure looks like it," Faraday agreed, his throat feeling raw. "As if the skin just grew up around one
of them..."

For a long second he and Chippawa stared at each other. Then, in unison, they both turned back to
their boards.

"Underside cameras have gone dark," Faraday announced tightly, his eyes flicking across those
displays. "Forward ones... maybe the connections were knocked loose in the crash."

"Damn," Chippawa said. "Look at the window."

Faraday looked up. On the lower edge of the window, a brownish-gray sheet was slowly working its
way up the Quadplexi.

"It's growing over us," Chippawa said, very quietly. "The skin is growing straight over us."

Faraday licked at dry lips. Tearing his eyes away from the window, he searched out the pressure
sensors.

At least the news there wasn't any worse. "Underside pressure's holding steady," he said. "The skin
isn't squeezing us any harder than the atmosphere is."

"Pretty small comfort, if you ask me," Chippawa said grimly. Probably growing all the way up the
hull. WhoopsтАФmain drive just shut back to standby. The whole ring, too. The skin must have rolled