"Brin, David - Uplift 5 - Infinity's Shore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

* Only to find refuge,

* On a forlorn planet (nude!)

* In laminar luxury! *

 

SO HE THOUGHT WHILE PERFORMING SWOOPING rolls, propelling his sleek gray body with exhilarated tail strokes, reveling in the caress of water against naked flesh.

 

Dappled sunlight threw luminous shafts through crystal shallows, slanting past mats of floating sea florets. Silvery native creatures, resembling flat-jawed fish, moved in and out of the bright zones, enticing his eye. Kaa squelched the instinctive urge to give chase.

 

Maybe later.

 

For now, he indulged in the liquid texture of water sliding around him, without the greasiness that used to cling so, back in the oily seas of Oakka, the green-green world, where soaplike bubbles would erupt from his blowhole each time he surfaced to breathe. Not that it was worth the effort to inhale on Oakka. There wasn't enough good air on that horrid ball to nourish a comatose otter.

 

This sea also tasted good, not harsh like Kithrup, where each excursion outside the ship would give you a toxic dose of hard metals.

 

In contrast, the water on Jijo world felt clean, with a salty tang reminding Kaa of the gulf stream flowing past theFloridaAcademy , during happier days on far-off Earth.

 

He tried to squint and pretend he was back home, chasing mullet near Key Biscayne, safe from a harsh universe. But the attempt at make-believe failed. One paramount difference reminded him this was an alien world.

 

Sound.

 

-a beating of tides rising up the continental shelf-a complex rhythm tugged by three moons, not one.

-an echo of waves, breaking on a shore whose abrasive sand had a strange, sharp texture.

-an occasional distant groaning that seemed to rise out of the ocean floor itself.

-the return vibrations of his own sonar clicks, tracing schools of fishlike creatures, moving their fins in unfamiliar ways.

-above all, the engine hum just behind him ... a cadence of machinery that had filled Kaa's days and nights for five long years.