"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Hell on Earth (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

about: your ears ring; it's hard to hear sounds (thinner
air makes everything sound muffled and "tinny"); and
worst of all, your mind can start to go. Our brains are
built for a certain barometric pressure, and if it's too
high or too low, we start getting strange.
Or in Arlene's case, hallucinogenic.
"Pumpkin!" she suddenly screamed, waking me
after two hours of my allotted four. She grabbed a
pump-action riot gun and pounded a shot over my
head, so close it made my skull vibrate.
"Pumpkin" was our name for the horrible, floating
alien headsЧmechanical, I thinkЧthat vomited ball
lightning capable of frying you at fifty paces. I threw
myself off the table we used as a bed, figuring the
vacation was over: the aliens had found us at last!
But when I dropped to my knees, Sig-Cow rifle at
the ready, all I saw was the dark hole in the wall left by
my overly enthusiastic motor test of a week ago.
Arlene ran down the passageway ahead of me, firing
wildly; firing at nothing. But those bastard alien
"demons" could be fast! I had no reason to doubt my
buddy as I joined her, ready to do what we'd done
countless times during our assault on Phobos,
Deimos, and the tunnel.
Then she ran straight into the bulkhead like it
wasn't there, and I suddenly realized something was
seriously wrong with her.
She knocked herself out. I couldn't look after her
then; I had to make sure about the pumpkin.
Knuckling the residue of sleep from bloodshot eyes,
I ran like a mother down the corridor, eyes left, right
. . . not wasting a shot but ready for the enemy. For an
instant I thought I saw a flying globe and almost
squeezed off a shot. But it was a trick of peripheral
vision, just a flash of my own shadow.
A cul-de-sac at the end of the corridor finally
convinced me that there was no freaking pumpkin.
I stood for a moment, desperately trying to get
nonexistent air into my burning lungs. Then I re-
turned to Arlene, who groaned and panted as she
started coming to.
"Pal, honey, I hate to do this . . . but I've got to
relieve you of your weapon."
She stared uncomprehendingly.
"There was no pumpkin," I explained. "You're
suffering from low-pressure psychosis."
"Oh Jesus," she said quietly. She understood.
Sadly, she handed over the scattergun and her AB-10
machine pistol.
I felt like the bottom of my boots after walking