"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Infernal Sky (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"A what?"
"I forgot. You call them something else, don't
you?"
"Steam demons."
"Yes, well, we're standardizing the terminology for
official government science. Now take the cacode-
mons, for instance."
"A what?"
"You call them pumpkins. I confess I like that name
myself, what with the Halloween associations, but it
won't do for an official name."
"Do you have any cacodemons here?"
He shook his head. "They dissolve shortly after the
tissues are disrupted. When we try to secure samples
for analysis, we're left with only a test tube of liquid
and powder. So tell me, Jill, what do you make of the
cyber . . . er, the steam demon?"
"The name 'cyberdemon' makes sense," I agreed. I
didn't tell him what I thought of "cacodemon." "The
mechanical parts stick into the body so deep—"
"They are not attachments," he corrected. "Look!"
He pointed at the portion of the arm that began in
flesh and ended in the metal of a rocket launcher.
"Neither the arm nor the launcher is complete, but
the cross section shows the point of connection be-
tween the arm and the weapon. You see it, don't you,
Jill? You don't need a microscope."
The only other time I'd been this close to a piece of
monster was when the foot of a spider-mind almost
crushed me on the train when we rescued Ken. I
wondered what Ackerman called the spider-minds.
Anyway, seeing a cross section of a demon was a new
experience. "I don't believe it," I admitted.
"Seeing is believing."
The red shaded into silver-gray. There was no
dividing line. The rocket launcher grew out of the
flesh.
"That's one for Ripley," he said.
"Huh?"
"A little before your time. It means it's hard to
believe, but the evidence is right before you. When I
first started studying these creatures, I was most
puzzled about their weapons. Think about it. The
imps fire a weapon that's purely organic in nature."
"We call them imps, too. Well, sometimes spinies."
"Uh-huh. Your pumpkins do the same with their
balls of concentrated acid and combustible gas. Why,
then, do these larger creatures use weapons similar to
the artillery used by humans?"
I'd never thought about that. If someone is trying to