"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Dispossesed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

quite too late. They barely winged the man they wanted,
just as he got to the ship, but a two-pound flint caught one
of the Defense crew on the side of the head and killed
him on die spot.

The hatches of the ship closed. The Defense crew turned
back, carrying their dead companion; they made no effort
to stop the leaders of the crowd who came racing towards
the ship, though the foreman, white with shock and rage,
cursed them to hell as they ran past, and they swerved to
avoid her. Once at the ship, the vanguard of the crowd
scattered and stood irresolute. The silence of the ship, the
abrupt movements of the huge skeletal gantries, the strange
burned look of the ground, the absence of anything in
human scale, disoriented them. A blast of steam or gas
from something connected with the ship made some of
them start; they looked up uneasily at the rockets, vast
black tunnels overhead. A siren whooped in warning, far
across the field. First one person and then another started
back towards the gate. Nobody stopped them. Within ten
minutes the field was clear, the crowd scattered out along
the road to Abbenay. Nothing appeared to have happened,
after all.

Inside the Mindful a great deal was happening. Since
Ground Control had pushed launch time up, all routines
had to be rushed through in double time. The captain had
ordered that the passenger be strapped down and locked
in, in the crew lounge, along with the doctor, to get them
out from underfoot There was a screen in there, they
could watch the liftoff if they liked.

The passenger watched. He saw the field, and the wall
around the field, and far outside the wall the distant slopes
of the Ne Theras, speckled with scrub holum and sparse,
silvery moonthom.

AH this suddenly rushed dazzling down the screen. The
passenger felt his head pressed back against the padded
rest. It was like a dentist's examination, the head pressed
back, the jaw forced open. He could not get his breath, he
felt sick, he felt bis bowels loosen with fear. His whole
body cried out to the enormous forces that had taken
hold of him. Not now, not yet, wait!
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