"Edgar Pangborn- West of the Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pangborn Edgar)

The ship was alien, far away. Turning, bright and deliberate, like a mirror
dropped in a well. The other lifeboat? But Ed would have to reach it, close lock,
strap in, open shield, while the ship went…
"Down"—lately an artificiality, now the plainest word in the language. A
gleaming disturbance in the air "down" yonder—something streaking away from
the dot that was a dying ship? "Ed, can you hear me? Over."
 "Yes," said the voice in the earphones.
Paul noticed himself weeping. "They made it! They made it!"
The voice said coldly, "Quiet. Your altitude? Over."
"Forty-six thousand. All under control. Over, jerk."
"I'm going to head for—Ah! Can you see the ship?"
It was possible to find the silver dot of Argo above an S-shaped expanse of blue.
The blue, Paul understood, was not becoming larger, simply nearer. The dot
changed to a white flower, which swelled and hung tranquilly over the blue, a brief
memorial. The radio carried a groan, and then: "Better maybe. The lake may be
shallow enough for salvage. If it'd hit ground there'd be nothing at all. Get nearer,
Paul. Keep me in sight—not too damn' near."
Time… Delicately Paul asked the boat for a steeper glide. The response was even.
Was it? Some peevish sound. He flattened the glide a thousand feet above Ed's boat.
The red-green below—anything real about it? Yes, if time was real, but one had to
think that over…
Mild hills of dark red-green, in the—west? Yes, because now there was a birth of
sunset beyond them. Lighter green below, alongside the lake: that would be
meadow. Not one of the great lakes—no larger than Lake Champlain, its outlet in
the south blurred by marsh; only a portion of its northwest shore adjoined the
meadow—except in that region the lake was a blue S written on red-green dark of
jungle. A winged brown thing slipped by, teasing the edge of vision. "Bird or
something…"
In the earphones was a dazed note, like shame. "Power was out of control,
Paul—port motor. Had to be a defect in the building—something that couldn't take
the strain of what happened eleven years ago. All the way—God!—and then to be
loused up by a builder's error!" To Spearman, Paul knew, a mechanical defect was
the gravest of indecencies, beyond any forgiveness.
True sunset here. A world. And you don't climb out of gravity on charlesite. Paul
said, "Doc—parallel lines—I think."
But the speed of the glide allowed no certainty, only a glimpse of three dark bars,
perhaps half a mile long in the jungle area northwest of the meadow, and a hint of
other groups further north. They should be there, according to a map Spearman
had made in orbit from the final photographs. And some fifty miles south of here
was a great network of them thirty miles long. The glide brought them out over
meadow once more.
A thing was riding with them. A grumbling moan. Paul told himself: With Model
L-46 it cannot happen—it cannot—Dorothy—Doc—
Dorothy cried, "Specks—in the open ground. Moving, hundreds of 'em. Oh, look!
Smoke, Paul—campfires. How high are we?"
"Under seven thousand. Check your compass by the sunset, Doc. See if we have a
magnetic north."
"We do…"
 Spearman's far-off voice said, "Life all right. I can't make out—"
Paul cut in with hurried precision: "Ed—vibration, port wing, bad. I'm going to