"Alan Dean Foster & Eric Frank Russell - Design for Great Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Here’s to the futures he foresaw

And to true ecology

Wherein he was the wealthiest of men
Before it became common currency

I

The little ship, scarred and battered, sat on the plain and ignored the armed guard that had surrounded it
at a safe distance. As an example of an extraplanetary vessel it was remarkably unimpressive. A
featureless, flattened ovoid devoid of ports or visible doorways, no bigger than one of the lifeships or
escape pods utilized by the dominant race of the world on which it had just arrived. It looked barely
capable of transporting a few individuals between cities on the same continent, much less conveying them
between worlds.

In fact, more than one of the newly emplaced guards wondered if it might not actually be some sort of
lifeboat or emergency craft that had been cast off from a damaged mother ship locked in orbit high
above. Though they had yet to receive any indication that this might indeed be the case, it seemed a
plausible enough explanation. Possibly the parent vessel had been destroyed, or tumbled helplessly to
burn up in the thick atmosphere. There were any number of rational possibilities that offered more
plausible explanations.

Not only did the eccentric craft look too small to be capable of interplanetary travel, it did not give off a
glow suggestive of rapid passage through the atmosphere, which meant that it either moved very slowly
or exceptionally fast. The heavily armed soldiers who had hastily formed a defensive perimeter around
the vessel’s landing site were not prepared to speculate either way, but nothing could stop them from
making offhand guesses. They were neither scientists nor engineers but ordinary troops.

In the average soldier speculation was a potentially dangerous quality, one devoutly to be avoided at all
costs. Indulging in the process frequently brought down disapprobation and disaster and was only rarely
rewarded. It was an activity best left to officers and non-military personnel. The heavily armed troopers
were more than content to follow orders, aim weapons, and wait for someone to tell them what to do
next.

It was impossible, however, not to wonder at the tiny vessel’s composition or means of manufacture.
Though without running appropriate scientific analysis it was impossible to tell for certain, it did not
appear to be fashioned either of metal or the more familiar metaloceramic composites. There was some
discussion among the more knowledgeable onlookers of nanocarbon tubes embedded in a bonding
ceramic or glass matrix, but the dullish appearance of the intruder’s matte epidermis provided little in the
way of support or rebuttal for such theory.

In fact, depending on which way the early morning light happened to strike the ship’s surface, it was not
only difficult to guess what it might be fashioned of, but whether it possessed a solid skin at all. Light
played tricks with the onlookers’ eyes and with the ship’s exterior. At times it seemed one could see
halfway through the vessel, while when clouds scudded by overhead it appeared far more substantial.

In actuality, the little ship was possessed of a consistency that fell somewhere between an aerogel and the
core of a neutron star. Its component atoms were arranged in such a way as to not only baffle an
experienced observer but utterly defeat the best analytical instruments that could be brought to bear; so