"Andre Norton - The X Factor 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

of piloting, but the smooth beat of the Scout ship that had taken him to
Vaanchard in his father's company was lacking. There was instead a pulsation,
an ebb and flow of power on a broken beat. Another light turned red.
"Condition critical!" Diskan's head jerked against the padded surface of the
cradle. The words were mechanical and came out of the walls around him.
"Damage to the fifth part. Going on emergency for landing! Repeat: going on
emergency for landing!" Substance spun out of the wall to his left. In the air
it seemed a white mist. Settling on and about his body, it thickened, became a
coating of cushioning stuff, weaving him into a cocoon of protective covering.
The trembling beat in the walls was even more uneven. Diskan knew that an
emergency landing might well end in a crash that would erase ship and
passenger on the instant of impact. His helplessness was the worst. Simply to
lie there in the covering spun by the ship to protect human life and wait for
extinction was a torture. He struggled against the bonds of his padding—to no
purpose. Then he yelled his need for freedom to the walls pressing in on him
as his screams echoed from them. Mercifully, black closed about Diskan then,
and there was an end to waiting. He was not conscious of the fact the ship had
entered planetary atmosphere, that the journey tape guided a crippled ship
down to the surface of the unknown world. The spinning ball of the planet lost
the anonymity imposed by distance. Shadows of continents, spread of seas now
showed on its surface, appeared waveringly on the visa-plate above Diskan's
head. A dark world, a world with a certain forbidding aspect, not welcoming
with lush green like Vaan- chard or with brown-green like Nyborg—this was a
gray-green, a slate or steel-hued world. Orbiting, the spacer passed from
night to day, to night, in a weird procession of telescoping time. There was a
sun, more pallid here, and five moons shedding a wan reflected light on
saw-toothed heights, which formed spiny backs of firm land above morasses of
swamp and fen, where the shallow seas and land eternally thieved, one from the
other. There were eyes that witnessed the passage of the ship drawing closer
to the surface of the world. And there was intelligence—of a sort—behind those
eyes, assessing, wondering. Movement began over a relatively wide space—an
ingathering such as was not natural, perhaps an abortive ingathering, or
perhaps, this time— Eyes watched as the spacer, poised uneasily on its tail of
flames, began the ride down via deter rockets to a small safety of rock and
earth. The descent was not clean. One tube blew. Instead of a three-fin
landing, the spacer crashed, rolled. Vegetation flamed into a holocaust during
that crazy spin. Death of plant or animal came in an instant. Then the broken
hulk was still, lying on mud that bubbled and shifted around it, allowing it
to settle into its glutinous substance. For the second time, Diskan roused.
The dying ship, in a last spasmodic effort, strove for the safety of the Me it
had guarded to the best of the ability its designers had devised. The cocoon
of which he was the core was propelled from the pilot's seat, struck against a
hatch that lifted part way and then stuck. The stench of the mud and the
burned vegetation brought him to, coughing weakly. Wisps of torn white stuff
blew around his head and shoulders. The fear of being bound and helpless,
which had carried over from those seconds before his last blackout, set Diskan
to a convulsive effort, which scraped him through the half-open hatch, meant
for the emergency escape. He went head first into the mud, but his shoulder
and side jarred brutally against stone, the pain bringing him around. Somehow
he scrambled over stuff that slid and sucked at him until there was solid