"ab Hugh, Dafydd & Linaweaver, Brad - Doom 04 - Endgame 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

before among the Klave, never even knew it was
physically possible! I guess that was their equivalent
of multiple-personality disorder, or in this case, a
feedback loop—they could neither advance nor fail
to advance. I expected smoke to come out their ears at
any moment, but they disappointed me.
Arlene and I found the emergency engine-room
access panel and laboriously hand-cranked it open,
then we dropped lightly through, landing with a
crunch on Fredworld.
3
As predicted by the timeline program, the
ground and air were quite hot and very humid, but we
didn't sink into lava or inhale a lungful of hydrogen
cyanide. The ship, which evidently had no name, just
a number, was so monstrous it looked like that
shopping mall in Tucson—used to be in Tucson—
that advertised as the world's largest, until the Fred
bomb. The beast that had carried us a couple hundred
light-years hulked high above our heads, stretching on
put of sight in a generally sunward direction, shield-
ing us from the terrific heat.
Sideways past the ship were a series of squarish
buildings seemingly built on something soft that had
collapsed; they all leaned, one way or another, at
crazy angles like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The
whole arrangement looked like a demented version of
an Earth spaceport. In the other direction was a
monstrous condo complex erected roughly like a
human graveyard, like headstones arranged in con-
centric circles. The reddish sky added to the "charm"
of Fredworld, its ground that glowed in spots, covered
with eight centimeters of black ash.
There was not a single artichoke-head to be seen. A
spongy walkway encircled the ship's berth; we cau-
tiously moved onto it, expecting the Fred to come
screaming out of the buildings at any moment and
fully prepared to instantly retreat to our defensive
positions aboard the ship.
For the next eleven hours we searched that damned
compound—nearly two thirds of an eighteen-hour
Fred day. We found sludge from decomposing leaves
littering half the buildings; either they liked walking
through sludge or a bunch of Fred were slain so
suddenly that no one had time to sweep the place. But
then, where were the corpses? "I'm getting a real bad
feeling about this," I muttered to Arlene.
She said nothing, just tugged on my body armor
and pointed back at the ship: after eleven hours, Sears
and Roebuck were finally poking their noses out,