"Larry Tritten - Raft" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tritten Larry)

Raft
by Larry Tritten




F rom out of space came a slender, cylindrical space vessel, half a mile long, hurtling at a
skewed angle. Its metallic fuselage bore scores of concave impressions, as if a vast mailed
fist had hammered along its length, and it seemed to be falling. As it fell, in what appeared to
be a listless way, dark incandescent red and orange colors limned its shape.

Against a universe alight with placid starlight it was an aberrant sight.

An observer would have known immediately that here was a tragedy, a rare drama being
played out against the endless dazzle of countless suns reduced to points of white light,
impartial and ubiquitous. The craft moved, fell, as swiftly as a meteor, the hot colors burning
it with increasing brightness.

And then, falling like a meteor that burns more greatly upon entering an atmosphere, it
exploded. Vast involuted peals of radiant light consumed the vessel and for hundreds of miles
around it there was turbulence, an inflammatory spectacle, floral in appearance, reducing the
quiet drama of mere distant starlight to momentary insignificance.

In the nebulous wake of the explosion great shards of metal detritus careened errantly
through space. Then, soon after, a transparent cube the size of a small room went on falling
through the void. Inside it an observer would have seen a man-being and a small quadruped
beast, both agitated and apparently crying.

The cube's velocity slowed, slowing more and more until it seemed almost balletic in its
motion, delicate, seeming to waft. The man put his hands against the side of the cube,
staring out at space and its stars like a wilderness of chandeliers. The small beast ran about,
making frightened sounds. The man stared out of the cube for a long while, and then,
overcome by the exhaustion of his ordeal, eased away from the side of the cube and lay
down on his back with his limbs extended.

Presently the beast calmed down, then went to the man and began to lick his face, an action
the man tried to fend off with a flailing of one hand. But when the beast persisted, he
reached out suddenly and swept it in an embrace, holding it tightly but gently. Minutes
passed during which neither being moved discernibly. Several minutes later the man released
the beast, looking out into space as if in confusion.

The man wore a tight-fitting yellow suit, the pockets of which he began to examine, taking
out of them, one after another, a small notebook, a felt-tipped pen, some coins, a chain
holding a number of keys and a wallet. He put the items on the bottom of the cube and
appraised them, smiling now enigmatically. The beast approached the items, probing at them
with its muzzle. It walked erratically, as if its legs were weak or injured. The man noticed
this, and reached out to stroke its head. Then he opened the wallet and removed a series of
photographs, arranging them in a row on the bottom of the cube.

Shaking his head, he seemed to begin to cry again, although there were no tears, just a