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

shivered, as if feeling a chill wind or someone walking
across her grave.
"Maybe we can pick up some trace from orbit."
"After forty years?"
"Maybe Sears and Roebuck has some idea." Yeah,
right. Sears and Roebuck never even heard of the
Newbies until just now, and if they had that hard a
time understanding us and our evolutionary rateЧ
Jeez, how could they even imagine the Newbies and
what they might mutate into? "Let's head back," I
decided. "We're not doing anything out here but
scaring the pants off of each other."
Arlene nodded gravely. "Kinky," she judged.
I heard a strange, faint buzz in my earpiece as we
headed back toward the ship . . . sounds, voices al-
most. I could nearly believe they were whispers from
the Fred ghosts, desperately trying to communicateЧ
perhaps still fighting the final battle that had de-
stroyed them. I was now convinced that there was not
a single artichoke-headed Fred left intact on that
planet, except for the corpses we brought with usЧ
corpses we would never revive. In fact, I decided to
leave them behind on Fredworld; the temptation to
wake me dead, just tor someone to talk to, might be
too great, overwhelming our common sense and self-
preservation.
But the notion of ghosts wasn't that far-fetched.
Since their spirits never died, where did they go? I
began to feel little stabs of cold on the back of my
neck, icy fingers poking and prodding me. Jesus, shut
off that imagination! I commanded myself.
"Huh?" Arlene asked, jumping guiltily. "Criminey,
Fly, are you a mind reader now?"
I said nothing ... hadn't even been aware I spoke
that last thought aloud; curious coincidence that it
turned out to be perfectly appropriate.
The ship was so huge that it was hard to recognize it
as mobile; it looked like an artificial mountain, three-
eighths of a kilometer high, over a hundred storiesЧ
taller than the Hyundai Building in Nuevo AngelesЧ
and stretching to the vanishing point in either direc-
tion. The landing pad was barely larger than the
footprint of the ship, clearly built to order. Weird
markings surrounded the LZ, the landing zone,
burned into the glass-hard surface by an etching laser,
either landing instructions or ritual hieroglyphs. They
looked like they once had been pictograms, now
stylized beyond recognition.
"You know, Fly, we've never actually walked all the
way around this puppy."