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

when the ship cracked down and the cargo doors
opened on Fredworld. We had this crazy idea that we
had to protect those twoЧthat one?ЧAlley Oop,
Magilla Gorilla look-alike Klave, or at least try.
Step one was to coax it, her, him, or them out of the
damned stateroom. We tried the direct approach first:
Arlene and I climbed "up" toward the central axis of
the ship. The acceleration decreased to 0.2 g at the
level of Sears and Roebuck's quarters, barely enough
to avoid my old problems with vertigo. I sure didn't
want to go any farther inboard, that was for damned
sure.
Arlene didn't look bothered, though; various parts
of her anatomy floated pretty free under her uniform,
and she looked like she was loving it. I tried not to
look at such temptationsЧfifty-eight days left; I
wanted to spend it with my buddy, not trying to force
a relationship that had never existed and never ought
to exist.
The "upper" corridors were like sewer pipes, corru-
gated and smelly. The Freds breathed slightly differ-
ent air than we, but it didn't seem poisonous (Sears
and Roebuck swore we could breathe the Fred air).
Very tall corridors, to accommodate the Freds when
they were in their seed-depositing stage, like gigantic
praying mantises ... I couldn't reach the roof even
by jumping.
Arlene and I slipped and slid down the hot slimy
passageway; it took me a few moments to realize that
the slime was decomposing leaves from their
artichoke-heads.
"You know," said my lance, when I told her my
insight, "we don't even know whether these are dis-
carded leaves, or whether it's the decomposed bodies
of the Freds themselves. What happens to their bodies
when they die? Do they have to put some preservative
on them, like Egyptian mummies, to prevent this
from happening?" She kicked a pile of glop in which
were still visible the ragged framelines of Fred head-
leaves.
I shook my head. "I suppose we can keep an eye on
the captain and see if he begins to deteriorate."
We figured out that slithering was the easiest way to
move along the passageway without falling; it was like
ice-skating through an oil slick, but we finally made it
to the Sears and Roebuck stateroom.
"Stateroom" was an apt description; it was pretty
stately. Because they had to accommodate the con-
stantly changing size of the Freds, the rooms were
built to monstrous scale, but with a nice mix of