"Timothy Zahn - Spinneret" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Zahn, Timothy - Spinneret


keys. What rotten luck. Carmen thought as she waited for the data flow to begin.
Stuck in a little room twenty kilometers from the landing field when I could be out
there catching my first glimpse of a real live alien.

Though come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't such bad luck, after all. The
Rooshrike had contacted humans once before тАж and that time they'd opened fire.

The Rooshrike attack on the Celeritas was also on Meredith's mind as he watched
the shiny dot driving over the ocean toward Martello Base, the feeling of being a
massive sitting duck adding stiffness to his back as he sat in the lead vehicle of the
five-car welcoming committee. The chances that this was a sneak attack were
smallтАФafter all, over half of Astra's rental fee had yet to be paidтАФbut business
logic had only minimal effect on Meredith's combat reflexes. Trying to pretend
that the sweat collecting on his forehead was due solely to the warm day, he
squinted into the bright blue of the sky and waited.

Radar had already shown that the ship was considerably larger than the shuttles
Martello's landing strip had been designed for, but the Rooshrike pilot had assured
Meredith that that wouldn't be a problem, and as the arrowhead-shaped craft made
its final descent, the colonel saw why. Unlike the largely horizontal approach used
by American shuttles, the Rooshrike's was predominantly vertical, reminding
Meredith momentarily of the old single-use space capsules. He winced, recalling
the helplessness of those ancient craft; but at nearly the same instant the image
vanished as white spears of repulser fire erupted from beneath the ship. Even at
their supposedly safe distance Meredith distinctly felt the heat wave of that
ignition, and with a silent prayer for the runway's permcrete, he watched the alien
touch down. A minute later, he ordered the motorcade forward.

The Rooshrike ship had deployed a debarkation ramp by the time the humans
reached the area. The ramp, designed to bypass the hottest sections of permcrete,
was considerably shorter than the ones the Ctencri who'd landed on Earth had
used, and Meredith decided the description of the Rooshrike as hot-planet aliens
hadn't been overstating the case.

The Rooshrike itself, when it appeared, wasn't particularly impressive; but then, as
Lieutenant Andrews would comment later, there wasn't a lot even aliens could do
with basic spacesuit design. Apart from the oddly shaped face just barely visible
through the dark visor, the creature descending the ramp might almost have been a

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Zahn, Timothy - Spinneret


slightly misproportioned human.

It came alone. Taking the cue, Meredith left the cars and went forward, moving as
close to the ramp as he could stand. The alien reached the end of the ramp and