The Stones of Nomuru
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Серия: Viagens Interplanetarias #7
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Stones of Nomuru». Краткое содержание книги:
Mild-mannered Terra archeologist Keith Salazar was just minding his business, digging up the alien past on an out-of-the-way site on the planet Kukulcan, when suddenly he was beseiged by intruders on his scholarly peace: hostile natives, an indifferent ex-wife, and a demon developer with rapacious eyes glued on both his site and his true love.
In the course of protecting his dig, regaining his loved one and vanquishing his rival, Salazar will fight a giant reptilian predator bare-handed, leap into snake-filled pits, engineer the planet's first imperial conquest, lead and train a battalion of alien riflemen, and hold a séance. Pretty exciting work--but then maybe Keith Salazar wasn't such a milquetoast after all...
Binoculars raised, Bergen scanned the view. Excitedly he exclaimed: "Hey, isn't that a herd of tseturen, under that clump yonder—those plants that look like oversized pineapples?"
Salazar raised his own field glasses. "Yep, three or four."
Bergen continued to sweep the landscape. "There's one of those big two-leggers with a beak, like the porondu you rode."
Salazar looked. "That's a fyunga, an even bigger predator—the largest on this continent. Notice all the other critters are heading away from it except the tseturens, who are standing in a bunch with their horns toward the fyunga."
Bergen said: "Kind of like one of those flesh-eating dinosaurs they had on Terra long ago, isn't it?"
"Kind of, except for the hooked beak and long arms. We'd better hope it's wandered off" by the time we get down to the valley."
"I'm not afraid of it, with this!" Bergen slapped his fourteen-millimeter rifle. "It's only an oversized lizard."
"Maybe so; but I should want a cannon or a ray weapon. You'd be surprised how much damage a fyunga can absorb and still make a snack of you. Actually, it's more of a scavenger and a hijacker of smaller predators' kills. It's too ponderous to catch the little plant eaters. But it'll snap you up quick enough when it can. This fellow seems to be heading away, so let's find a place to camp."
An hour later, under Salazar's supervision, the Kooks were setting up tents beside a small effluent of the Tsugaa. Bergen sat on a camp chair and, speaking to the poignette on his wrist, gave orders to his subordinates in Suvarov. Salazar leaned against a tent pole and held a similar conversation with Galina Bartch at the site.
When Bergen finished, he clicked off and said: "Hey, we've got a couple of hours of daylight yet. Let's go out and pot a tseturen or something!"
"Getting the head of a tseturen back to camp will be an all-day job," said Salazar.
"We could leave the carcass overnight—"
"And come back next day to find it picked clean. A pack of podshos would tear it apart in no time."
"Okay, okay," groaned Bergen. "Any time I want a little fun, you think up some way to nix it. Like that other New Englander, the one who was always burning witches. What was his name? Cotton Wool or something?"
"Cotton Mather. And they didn't burn witches; they hanged them. Conrad, you can do as you damn please. I'm just telling you what'll happen. If you want to shoot a smaller critter for meat, that's reasonable."
"Which is the best eating? The two-legged or the four-legged?"
"Doesn't much matter. A tisai, the quadruped that looks something like a scaly pig, is pretty good."
"You'd better come along and point one out. Coming, boys?"
Footsore, Travers and Pokrovskii begged off. Bergen picked up his heavy rifle, slapped the stock, and said: "This is the medicine for thick-skinned large game: fourteen millimeters and over seven hundred meter-kilos of muzzle energy. It's a real import from Terra, not the junk our local machine shops turn out."
"For the kind of game we're hunting, don't use that cannon; it'd scatter the animal over a hectare." Salazar shrugged. "But bring it along, just in case."
Half an hour later, the archaeologist was pointing out features of the local fauna. "The main distinction among the larger animals is not between mammal and reptile, as on Terra, because there are no mammals. It's between the bipedal and quadrupedal forms, which have evolved separately for millions of years. It's—"
"Save the lecture. Isn't that our dinner?" Bergen pointed.
"Yep." Offended, Salazar clammed up.
Bergen took his light rifle from the Kook who carried his guns, sighted, and fired. As the bullet hurled the tisai over and over, Bergen gave a triumphant whoop. But the tisai regained its feet and started away, hopping on three legs. Bergen fired again and missed; then Salazar fired. This time the animal dropped and lay still.
Bergen grunted. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"On the police range in Henderson."
They returned to camp with the Kook shouldering the carcass and toting one of Bergen's rifles with his free arm. As the smell of roasting tisai filled the camp, Kara Sheffield took Salazar aside.
"Keith, are you getting along all right with Conrad?"
"No explosions so far, though my geniality's worn so thin you can read a newspaper through it."
"Watch out for that terrible temper of his. Knowing you, I can't believe you approve of his resort plan."
Salazar smiled. "Ask me no questions and I'll utter no prevarications. Have any of our heroic hunters been stalking you?"
"So far, we've all been too tired after a day's hike. But stand by for the next installment."
"I shall, my dear. It's not really my business; but I can't help taking an interest."
Where the ten Kooks squatted in a circle, one of them began to play an instrument, which it blew and strummed at the same time. Although rhythmic, the music resembled no Terran tune. When several other Kooks sang a wailing song to it, Kara commented:
"Isn't that weird? Do you know what it says?"
Salazar replied: "It's a herder of domesticated tisais, calling to another herder: 'Bring your animals over to my side of the mountain to graze; the herbage is thicker here.' "
"Oh. It sounds better when you don't know what the words mean."
"Like most operas," added Salazar.
Next morning, when Bergen finished another long-distance conference with his workers in Suvarov, the hunters, with four of the Kooks as gun bearers, set out for the grove where they had seen the tseturens. They passed a herd of medium-sized quadrupeds, grazing. The animals raised their heads and, as the party approached, bounded away. Salazar said:
"Their flight distance is pretty short, because this area hasn't yet been hunted by Terrans."
"I presumed the natives would have hunted them," said Travers. "They have guns."
"The Shongos are satisfied with their crops and herds and manufactures. They consider hunting one's meat a barbarous practice."
"Don't they take time for sport?"
Salazar shook his head. "Except for some juten racing, the idea of fun and games is foreign to them. When one saw a tennis match in Henderson, he asked: 'Why don't they hire servants to play it for them?' Besides, their social system is so compartmented that nobody does much outside his hereditary occupations."
Another half-hour brought them in sight of the copse. Looking through his field glasses, Salazar reported: "They're still there, Conrad. Four."
"There isn't much cover. What'll they do if we just walk up to them?"
"Probably stare stupidly." Salazar moistened a finger and held it up. "We'd better circle around to the left, to keep downwind of them."
Bergen took from his bearer the fourteen-millimeter rifle. "Okay," he said in an authoritative tone. "Here we go. The rest of you, stay behind me. Don't shoot unless I tell you to."
He tramped off across the plain. His booted feet swished through the green, grassy vegetation and met the ground with solid thumps. Clouds of pseudo-insects rose on iridescent, glassy wings.
Salazar started to caution him: "Watch where you put your feet—" when Bergen leaped aside with a curse as something reared up and struck at him. The archaeologist ran forward in time to see a slender, black-and-white-striped, ribbonlike shape slither away and vanish.
"Did it bite you?" he said. "Where did it hit?"
"Just my boot," said Bergen. "What was it?"
"A boshiya; something like a Terran lizard, except its bite is venomous. A few centimeters higher, we'd have had to amputate and carry you back."
"Good God! Why the hell didn't you warn me?"