"Alan Dean Foster - The Tessellated Tetrahexahedral Yellow Rose of Texas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

themselves, we couldn't very well keep him in the dark, anyway. It'll be up to you and him to take care of
the three people from NASA. They won't look beyond the end of their gauges."

"Yes, sir. Good night, sir."

"Good night, Major Chester. Tell the driver to take it easy. The roads are bad."

"I will, sir."

Chester turned, walked wordlessly through an outer office, a waiting lobby, and down a corridor, then
out into the subfreezing night.



"Dad?"

"Huh-what?"

"Dad!"

Jesse Shattuck blinked, rolled over in bed. In the moonlight filtering fitfully in through the broken clouds
and the big window he saw the anxious face of his sixteen-year-old, David.

"What is if, boy?" Then he put up a hand for silence as his son started to reply.

The wind was a sad echo of its former might-the storm had obviously passed, he told himself-and the
barking reached him clearly from somewhere back of the henhouse. A shadow stirred on the other side
of the bed and sat up. It had a small, intense, delicately aquiline fact with eyes of black opal. The hair of a
woman thirty years younger cascaded in curls and ripples at its sides.

Shattuck sat motionless, listening to the frantic barking. The bedroom was warm and dark. A soft
anvil-like bang sounded from the old heater. He definitely did not want to go outside.

"What are those damn-fool dogs barking about now; J.W.?" his wife wondered in the darkness.
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"I don't know, Mother," the rancher admitted as he slid his long legs out from under the quilts.. He bent
over hunting for his socks. "Could be coyotes, maybe wolves. Too, it's cold enough and the pickings are
thin enough for them to risk trying the henhouse again. Thought we'd cured 'em of that last winter,
though." He pulled up the last sock, found his boots by the nightstand.

David rose, looked excited. "Should I get my gun, Dad?"

Shattuck nodded. "My twelve-gauge, too."

"And mine," said the woman, scrambling out of the other side of the bed.