"Foster, Alan Dean - Alien Nation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

the tunnel. He was surrounded by looming echoes.
He barely spun around in time to confront the massive shape as it lunged in
his direction. It uttered something violent in a nonhuman tongue that was
all sibilant hissing and glottal stops. Vinyl slapped at his face like the
wings of a fish-catching bat.
Somehow he brought the pistol up in time to fire once, twice, three times.
Raincoat stumbled backward, his knees collapsing an inch at a time like the
legs of a folding ladder, until he finally lay on his back on the tunnel
floor. Sykes found time to breathe, then advanced slowly.
With an inhuman bellow, the alien abruptly snapped erect and reached for
the detective with both long, outstretched arms.
A startled Sykes jumped backward and fired twice more at the dim
silhouette. This time when the raincoat-clad figure went down, he stayed
down.
Damn aliens, Sykes thought. His heart was pounding hard enough to break
fibs.
Only his street-sensitive hearing and his unwavering caution had saved him,
had allowed him to react to those last, closing footsteps. Just as they
made him turn now.
This noise was peculiar, an almost childish soft tinkling. Metal against
metal, jangling like toys or cheap jewelry. Jewelry. He turned in a circle,
the pistol extended before him, saw nothing, and only looked up at the last
possible moment.
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As one of the two aliens dropped down on him from directly above.
They both went down together, the alien grabbing with huge hands, Sykes
rolling frantically and somehow managing to hang on to his gun. As he tried
to bring it to bear, the alien swung the side of one palm and connected
with the detective's wrist. Pain raced through his hand and the gun went
skittering across the floor.
Sykes tried to run, found himself being lifted into the air as if he were
a child. The alien threw him up the tunnel. More pain, racing through
Sykes's back and arms as he hit the unyielding surface hard. A damn good
thing, he thought crazily, that the Newcomer hadn't thought to throw him
into the wall. That would likely be next.
Far off in the distance an angel was calling through the haze that filled
Sykes's brain. A siren, mournful yet promising. Too far away.
The alien was coming for him now; confident, silent, unopposable. As he
approached, Sykes heard the distinctive clinking sound which had almost
warned him in time. It was dark and his eyes were full of dancing Christmas
lights, but he still caught a quick glimpse of the source of the noise. It
was jewelry, yes, but not cheap. An exotic silver bracelet of obviously
alien design dangled from the Newcomer's right wrist. As the links slapped
against one another they produced the musical metallic tones that had
tickled his hearing.
The Newcomer loomed over the fallen detective, his head scraping the tunnel
ceiling, one fist raised to deliver a final blow. At the same time, the
forinerly faint echo of the siren grew much louder, as if it had turned a
nearby comer. Lights, flashing and glorious, illuminated the front entrance