"Diana Wynne Jones - The Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

aside and away like the view from a train window when the train is
going really fast. And as soon as the zodiac was out of sight, Hayley
discovered that being a comet was more fun than she had ever had
in her life. She zoomed along, laughing.
Her comet course, she knew, was a long thin oval. Since she was
outward-bound at the moment, in order to get back to Earth, she
knew she was going to have to rush out to her very limit and then
turn a hairpin bend before she could head back sunwards. That
meant at least a lightyear of rushing. “Whoopee!” she shrieked as
she sped outwards.
It was bliss. It went on for ages. But at last she felt her speed
dropping, as if she was coming near the end of her orbit. Turn the
corner, she thought. Now!
She swooped herself sideways. If she had had wheels, they would
have squealed and smoked with her speed. Hayley shrieked again
at the joy and danger of it. And, as she careered madly right, and
right and right again, she remembered Hesperethusa’s advice, to
alter her path and go home a different way. Or that dragon will be
waiting, she thought. So when she came to the last bit of her turn,
she swooped herself just a little bit more to the right and went
rushing off again not quite the way she had come.
And it was still bliss. Stars streaked past, pale, bright, red, blue,
and greenish yellow, forming themselves into starry animals, birds,
and people as they whirled by. Hayley bombed happily onwards,
until one set of stars turned itself slowly into an enormous bear.
The Great Bear, she thought, and knew she was almost home.
Sure enough, if she peered forwards and down through the veils
of her own hair, she could see the solar system, looking just like it
did on Grandad’s computer. There was the sun in the middle and all
the planets sedately circling it. She saw big Neptune and heavy,
white Uranus, ringed Saturn and Jupiter looking sultry and yellow,
with red blotches on it. Pluto was lurking somewhere out in the
dark, while little Mercury and cloudy Venus seemed much too near
the sun and likely to fry in its heat. And there circled red Mars and
blue Earth—
Hayley began to hope she was aimed properly at Earth, but as
she hurtled onwards, it began to look much more as if she was
heading straight for the sun. Comets did sometimes plunge into the
sun, she knew. Grandad had told her. She tried to sidle herself
more into a line for Earth, but she couldn’t. The sun was actually
pulling her.
“Oh, help!” she said. “I’m going to die . What a waste, now I’ve
discovered I can do this !”
Then, before she had totally panicked, it seemed as if she was
only going to pass very near the sun—to slide by perhaps a mere
million miles away. She could already feel the blazing heat from it.
When she looked at it, she could clearly see the twirling sunspots
and the hissing, leaping lumps of flame. And she could see the
person in green clothes standing in the hard, hot midst of it.
“What ?” Hayley thought. “People can’t— ”