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

the urgently assembled troops could be excused their confusion.

A few voices suggested that the vessel itself might be nothing more than an illusion, a projection designed
to deceive the eye and fool the mind. The War Department was known to be working on all manner of
new projects. Perhaps the troops had been rushed out to check the efficacy of some new aspect of
psychological warfare. Some suggested that if it were nothing more than a facile apparition it was an
extremely clever one, because it had scorched the ground in its immediate vicinity and gave every
indication from the earth that was depressed around its outer edge of having real mass and weight. It was
no lustrous phantom, no incorporeal composition of smoke and carefully shaded floating films. It was
real, and what it was made of might be quite prosaic, or contrastingly extraordinary. As the soldiers had
been issued strict orders while outbound from the nearby city not to approach the craft too closely under
any circumstances, they could not satisfy their curiosity even by simple touch.

Not that any of them particularly wanted to stroll up to the outlandish vessel and run a hand along its
eerily indistinct flanks anyway, but it was natural to be curious about its makeup as well as its origins.
There was always an air of mystery about the unknown, and this little ship trailed one behind it like an
ethereal cape blowing in the wind. The hastily assembled squadron of guards could be ordered not to
touch, but they could not be ordered not to think. Like ordinary soldiers anywhere, they had plenty of
spare time in which to engage in that entertaining if not necessarily educational practice. Squatting on the
open plain distant from the city, they availed themselves of the opportunity frequently and with inspired
sarcasm.

However rapidly the intruder had penetrated the local atmosphere it gave off no heat from its passage.
None, zero. Instruments confirmed what the soldiers suspected. It was most remarkable. All descending
vessels gave off some residual heat, if not as a result of the passage through atmosphere, then from their
engines and drives. Notwithstanding the singed soil that formed a blackened halo of modest dimensions
around the base of the vessel, the temperature of the air in its immediate vicinity was no different from
that elsewhere on the plain.

Some continued to argue that whether real or illusion-ary, it was nothing more than a clever training
exercise, a trick of advanced dimensions designed to test their readiness and reactions to the unexpected
and not immediately explicable. As time passed and nothing happened, this hypothesis gained credence
among the assembled and increasingly bored ring of guards.

One suggested that a single shot would make myth of the vessel’s reality. This headstrong individual was
quickly restrained by his friends. Being friends, they had no interest in seeing their bold companion
sentenced to an extended term in gaol. Besides which, he owed some of them money.

So they sat or stood, and guessed and guarded, the latter task in this particular instance turning out to be
a very dull deal indeed.

A large, bluish sun burned overhead, illuminating their surroundings if not their thoughts. It lit the edges of
flat, waferlike clouds in brilliant purple. While some might have found the scene starkly beautiful, few of
the attending soldiers bothered to remark on what was to them a common occurrence. Regardless of
species, soldiers on duty rarely had the time or inclination to ruminate on the aesthetics of their
surroundings.

The strange sun was not alone in the sky. It was accompanied by two tiny moons shining like pale
spectres low in the east. A third—larger, rounder, and more mellow in aspect—was diving into the
westward horizon.