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

"It worked," Faraday cut him off, jabbing a finger at the window. "LookтАФit worked!"

Chippawa inhaled sharply as the brown-gray skin seemed to melt away from the window,
accompanied by a multiple splash of yellow liquid.

And a second later, accompanied by the sound of hissing helium, the probe jerked free from its
prison. "Float deployed," Faraday shouted. "We're heading up."

"I've got the tether ship's carrier signal," Chippawa said. "They're on their way."

Something bumped Faraday's foot. He looked down, to find that his zero-gee coffee mug had come
out of hiding and had rolled up against it.

He took a deep breath, let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. For the first time since the tether broke,
he realized he was soaked with sweat. "It's over," he said quietly. "It's finally over."


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Timothy%20Zahn%20-%20Manta's%20Gift.htm (15 of 298) [10/18/2004 3:39:27 PM]
Manta's Gift

But it wasn't over. In fact, it had just begun.




ONE
The doctors had been and gone, the neurologists had been and gone, and the biotron people had been
and gone. For the first time in days, it seemed, Matthew Raimey was alone.

All alone.

He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. That was about all he could do, really, lie there and
stare at the ceiling. The clean, soothing, pastel blue-colored damned hospital ceiling.

Like the ceilings he would now be staring at for the rest of his life.

It was quiet at this end of the hospital. The kind of quiet that made it easy to think. To think, and to
remember.

Mostly, he found himself remembering the accident.

It replayed itself over and over against the pastel blue background, in exquisite and painful detail.
The little squeaks and crunches of his skis as they slid lightly over the packed snow. The icy wind
whipping at his ears and forehead and freezing the edges of his nostrils. The sharp aroma of the pine
trees, mixed with a hint of drifting smoke from the lodge below. The familiar tension in his bent
knees as he rode the crests and smoothed out the bumps of the mountain. Brianna's clear soprano
voice behind him as she laughed and chattered and threatened to zoom past him. The tiny mound of
snow that had caught the tip of his left ski and spun him a few degrees off course.