"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора

mines. Clouds covered the sky, and it was drizzling. The grass was wet;
within a few minutes they were drenched. Green followed his compass
faithfully, never once straying off course. As the odor of damp rust drifted
toward them. Maxim saw three rows of barbed wire and beyond them the dim
outline of the tower's massive girders. Raising his head slightly, he could
make out a squat triangular structure at the tower's base. The guardhouse.
Three legionnaires were sitting there with a machine gun. Indistinguishable
voices drifted through the patter of the rain; then a match was lit and the
long gunport glowed with a faint yellow light.
Green, on all fours, shoved the pole under the barbed wire. "Ready," he
whispered. "Back!" They crawled back ten paces and began to wait. Green
looked at the luminous hands of his watch. The detonator was clenched in his
fist. He was trembling. Maxim could hear his chattering teeth and labored
breathing. Maxim was trembling, too. He put his hand into the sack and
touched the mines; they felt rough and cold. As the rain grew heavier, all
other sounds were drowned out. Green rose slightly on all fours and kept
whispering something: he was either praying or cursing. "OK, you bastards!"
he shouted suddenly as he made a sharp movement with his right hand. The
click of the blasting cap was followed by a hissing, and up ahead a sheet of
red flames spouted from the earth. And far to the left, another broad sheet
leaped up, blasted their ears, and scattered hot wet earth, clumps of
smoldering grass, and chunks of red-hot metal. Green darted forward.
Suddenly a blinding light lit up the entire area. Maxim squinted. A cold
shiver ran down his spine as a thought flashed through his brain: "We've had
it." But there wasn't any shooting, and only rustling and hissing broke the
silence.
When Maxim opened his eyes, he saw the gray guardhouse, a large gap in
the barbed wire, and small solitary figures on the vast empty expanse
surrounding the tower.
The figures were running as fast as they could toward the guardhouse,
silently, soundlessly, stumbling, falling, jumping up and running again.
Then Maxim heard a plaintive groan: Green was sitting on the ground behind
the barbed wire and rocking from side to side with his head in his hands.
Maxim rushed to him and pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes bulged
and saliva bubbled on his Ups. Still no firing. An eternity had passed, but
the guardhouse was silent. Suddenly a familiar song rang out.
Maxim turned the slobbering Green on his back and fumbled in his pocket
with his other hand. Lucky thing that the General had been overcautious and
had given Maxim a supply of painkillers. He pried open Green's mouth and
forced him to swallow them, Then he grabbed Green's submachine gun and
turned around, looking for the source of the blinding light. Still no
firing, and the solitary figures continued to run. One was now quite close
to the guardhouse, another not far behind him, and a third, running from the
right, suddenly flung his arms out as he fell and tumbled head over heels.
"Oh, how the enemy weeps!" bellowed the singing voices. And the light beat
down from above, from a height of some dozen meters, probably from the
tower, which he couldn't make out now. There were five or six blinding blue
and white disks. Maxim raised his gun, aimed at the disks, and pulled the
trigger. The homemade weapon, small, awkward, and unfamiliar, trembled in
his hands. As if in reply, red flashes sparked in the gunport. Suddenly