"Dickson, Gordon - Stranger Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

They walked into the woods. The trees were big and had killed off all but a few straggly patches of underbrush between them. The moonlight came through their bare branches, filtering down in thin shafts.

"If something's here, it ought to show," she whispered at the back of his ear. The wood was only an acre or two deep—a patch rather than a real wood.

Sonny grunted. There was silence for a moment. Then he spoke again- "There!" he said. "Look!"

He stopped and Betty stopped, and Betty looked forward over his shoulder. In the little cleared spot between two big trees was something like a large, half-shattered silver egg. Its top half was still intact, but the bottom had broken and spread.

"What is it?" asked Betty.

But Sonny was already approaching the smashed thing. He came up and stood beside it. It was barely taller than his head—not more than six feet high as it stood—and maybe eight feet through the middle.

"Funny!" he said.

Betty had caught up with him by this time. "Is it some kind of plane?" she asked.

"Not likely," he said. Then he changed his mind. "Might be. They got new stuff coming out all the time nowadays." He frowned at it. "Sure looks flimsy, doesn't it?"

He reached out a hand to touch the cracked, silver surface before him. It bent at his touch. Through the whole thing ran a shiver and without warning a strange, deep voice spoke briefly to them from the thing's interior.

"What's that?" gasped Betty. Her eyes were big in the moonlight which in this little open space flooded down all around them. She and Sonny had both drawn back at the sound; and now they stood close together, staring.

"Leave me go," said Sonny. "I've got to look into this. Just you stay back a bit—"

Betty released the hands that had clutched at him all unwittingly. When he went forward, again, she ignored his advice and stayed close beside him. Gingerly, he touched the broken object once more.

Again, the voice spoke. It was as if the shattered thing responded instinctively to his touch.

He touched it once more. Clear and sharp, for the third time, the voice made sounds like recognizable words, in the night.

"E Gubling Dow!"

"Don't, Sonny!" cried Betty. "Leave it alone! It might be something dangerous- A bomb or something."

"There's something in there," said Sonny, staring in fascination at the object.

"Maybe it's something foreign. Let's go call the sheriff," said Betty. "Please, Sonny!"

He shook her off. "Foreign or not," he said, "there's something in there. I want to know what it is."

"Don't you know better!" she cried in agony. "They've got bombs and terrible things nowadays. It's not your business to look into things like this."

"Now you shut up," said Sonny. But he did not say it angrily. "This is my farm—"

"It is not! It's your dad's!"

"Mine as much as his. And I got a right to look in what comes onto it, if I want. Now you stay back."

"I won't," she said. "If you're going to do something crazy like that I'm going to be right with you."