"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 16 - Snakes Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

following the mirage for a while.

"Hup!" His call produced a wheeze like a leaky balloon as the dryzam swung to follow the man
following the snake.

Fly ten meters and wait for man and beast to catch up. Fly and wait, fly and wait.

Near the end of his endurance, Yakus had no idea how long he'd been following the insistent minidrag.
But he soon knew he could go no farther. If the mini-drag's water was real, it was too far off for him. No
one knew he was about to become the wealthiest corpse on Moth. Desperately, his weakened mind sent
walk messages to his legs. Water-starved cells rejected the request. Old knees struck unyielding gravel and
sand as Yakus's torso toppled forward and splashed into the surface.

Splashed?

He opened his eyes and discovered he couldn't see. The water was too murky. As he raised his head he
heard a deep gurgling sound nearby. The dryzam was sucking up water like a skimmer taking on fuel.

Murky water... Yakus would gratefully have accepted a feast made of mud. Anything possessing
moisture.

The pool rested in a low hollow beneath a shading, upthrust blade of gray-white phyllite. The pool was
barely two meters wide. An ocean.

Crawling in, he lay on his back against the sandy bottom. His throat hurt from the unaccustomed act of
swallowing. He felt ten years old.

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 Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes Eyes (SS) (v1.0)



After half an hour of luxuriating in the life-giving liquid, he thought to thank his benefactor. "Hey,
snake, Knigta Yakus gives life to you! Snake?"

Sitting up in the shallow water, he glanced around curiously. The minidrag was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, well, the motives of a little snake-thing..."

Something nearby coughed unpleasantly. Yakus tensed, the hidden sun drawing water off him. The
cough was repeated. Getting to his knees, Yakus looked around warily.

A head peeked out from behind the far side of the overhanging rock. It was a big head, square and
nasty. Mostly black, it was spotted with patches of gray and yellow that enabled it to blend in well with
the predominant colors of the High Desert.

Yakus had wondered during his long dry march about the possible presence of scavengers. Now he
didn't have to wonder anymore. Coming around the stone, the head was followed by a thick, powerful
turtlelike body moving on six lean legs. The predator was half the mass of his dryzam.