Читать книгу Origin - Stephen Baxter - Страница 17

‘Like it got sucked in,’ Malenfant said with grim fascination. ‘Maybe the wheel is a teleporter, drawing out our atmosphere.’ The plane juddered again, and she could see him wrestling with the stick. ‘Whatever it is it’s making a mess of the air flow.’

She could see the other planes, presumably military jets, pulling back to more cautious orbits. But the T-38 kept right on, battering its way into increasingly disturbed air. Malenfant’s shoulders jerked as they hauled at the recalcitrant controls.

‘Malenfant, what are you doing?’

‘We can handle this. We can get a lot closer yet. Those African guys are half-trained sissies –’

The plane hit another pocket. They fell fifty or a hundred feet before slamming into a floor that felt hard as concrete.

Emma could taste blood in her mouth. ‘Malenfant!’

‘Did you bring your Kodak? Come on, Emma. What’s life for? This is history.’

No, she thought. This is your wash-out. That’s why you are risking your life, and mine, so recklessly.

The artefact loomed larger in the roiling sky ahead of her, so large now that she couldn’t see its full circle for the body of the plane. Those iron-filing people continued to rain from the base of the disc, some of them twisting as they fell.

‘Makes you think,’ Malenfant said. ‘I spend my life struggling to get into space. And on the very day I get washed out of the programme, the very same day, space comes to me. Wherever the hell this thing comes from, whatever mother ship orbiting fucking Neptune, you can bet there’s going to be a clamour to get out there. Those NASA assholes must be jumping up and down; it’s their best day since Neil and Buzz. At last we’ve got someplace to go – but whoever they send it isn’t going to be me. Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? If Mohammed can’t get to the mountain …’

She closed her hand on the stick before her, letting it pull her passively to and fro. What if she grabbed the stick hard, yanked it to left or right? Could she take over the plane? And then what? ‘Malenfant, I’m scared.’

‘Of the UFO?’

‘No. Of you.’

‘Just a little closer,’ he said, his voice a thin crackle over the intercom. ‘I won’t let you come to any harm, Emma.’

Suddenly she screamed.‘… Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon!’