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well as having an exploratory function, these flights were calculated to relieve cosmophobia. Honeybunch sat at the controls of one of these craft, flying according to Lattimore's instructions. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Lattimore was in a state of great excitement, which communicated itself to the rating sitting next to him. Hank Quilter. They both gripped the rail and stared at the tawny lands rippling beneath them like the flank of a vast and vastly galloping beast.... A beast we'll learn to tame and ride, thought Lattimore, trying to analyse the choking sensation in his breast. This is what that whole school of minor writers was fumbling to say last century before space travel even began, and, ye gods and little fishes, they had more than was acknow-ledged. Because this is the genuine and only thing, to feel the squeeze in your cells of a different gravity, to ride over a ground innocent of all thought of man, to be the first that ever burst. It was like getting your childhood back, a big savage childhood; once, long ago, you'd gone behind the lavender bushes at the bottom of the garden and had stepped into terra incognita. Here it was again, and every stalk of grass a lavender bush. He checked himself. "Hover." he ordered. "Alien life ahead." They hovered, and beneath them a broad and lazy river was fringed with salad beds. In isolated groups therhinomen worked or sheltered behind trees. Lattimore and Quilter looked at each other. "Set her down." Lattimore ordered. Honeybunch set her down more daintily than he had ever handled woman. "Better have your rifles in case there's trouble," Latti-more said. They picked up their rifles and climbed with care to the ground. Ankles were easily broken at current weights, despite the hastily devised supports that they all wore to thigh height under their trousers. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html A line of trees stood about eighty yards west of them. The three men headed for the trees, picking their way through rows of cultivated plants that resembled bolting lettuce, except that their leaves were as large and coarse as rhubarb leaves. The trees were enormous, but notable chiefly for what looked like malformation of their trunks. They swelled and spread, each of them double lobed; they approxi-mated the shape of the aliens with their plump bodies and two sharp heads. From their crests, aerial roots tapered, many of them, like crude fingers. The foliage bristling on their topknots grew in a sort of stiff turbulence, so that again Lattimore felt the shiver of wonder; here was some-thing his weary intellect had not contemplated before. As the three moved towards these trees, rifles half-raised in traditional gesture, four-winged birds - butter-flies the size of eagles - clattered out of the tousled foliage, circled, and made away towards the low hills on the far side of the river. Beneath the trees, half a dozen rhinomen stood to watch the men approach. Their smell was familiar to Lattimore. He released the safety button of his rifle. "I didn't realise they were so big," Honeybunch said softly. "Are they going to charge us? We can't run -hadn't we better get back to the snooper?" "They're all ready to run," Quilter said. He wiped his wet lips with his hand. Lattimore had judged that the mildly swivelling heads of the aliens indicated no more than curiosity, but he wel-comed this token that Quilter felt as much in control of the situation as he did. "Keep walking, Honeybunch," he said. But Honeybunch had glanced back over his shoulder at their craft. He let out a cry. "Hey, they're attacking from the rear!" Seven of the aliens, two of them big chaps with grey hides, approached the snooper from behind, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html were moving towards it inquisitively, were only a few yards from it. Honeybunch lugged the rifle up to his hips and fired. His first shot missed. The second found a target. The men heard the californium slug hit with a force equivalent to seventeen tons of T.N.T. One of the big grey fellows heeled over, a crater torn in the smooth terrain of his back. The other creatures moved to their companion as Honeybunch's rifle came up again. "Hold your fire!" Lattimore said. His voice was cut off by the roar of Quilter's rifle on his left Ahead, one of the smaller aliens burst, a head and shoulders blown away. Unknown tendons in Lattimore's neck and face tightened. He saw the rest of the stupid things standing there, nonplussed, but giving no appearance of fear or anger, certainly showing no inclination to run. They could feel nothing! If they had not sense enough to see the power of men, they should be taught it. There wasn't a species living that didn't know about man and his fire-power. What were they good for but to serve as targets? Lattimore brought his rifle up. It was a short mechanism with collapsible butt, semi-silenced, semi-recoilless, firinga 0'5 slug on single or automatic. It went off just as Quilter fired again. They stood there shoulder to shoulder, firing until the seven aliens were blown asunder. Now Honeybunch was crying for them to stop. Lattimore and Quilter recognized each other's expressions. "If we went up in the snooper and flew low, we might throw a scare into them and get a moving target," Latti-more said. He polished up his spectacles, which had misted, on the front of his shirt. Quilter wiped his dry lips on the back of his hand. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "Somebody ought to teach those slugs how to run," he agreed. Mrs. Warhoon, meanwhile, stood speechless before per-fection. She had been invited aboard the captain's snooper, and they had descended to investigate what looked like an untidy cluster of ruins in the interior of the equatorial continent. There they had found proof of the aliens' intellectual status. There were the mines, the foundries, the refineries, the factories, the laboratories, the launching pads - all domesticated down to the level of a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |