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...
The nearest Choshas came closer. Kara whispered: "Aren't you going to shoot?"
"Hush! I've got to make every shot count."
When the nearest Kook was scarcely a stone's throw away, Salazar, resting his elbows on the top of the bank, sighted on that particular Chosha and carefully squeezed off a round. The gun banged, and the Chosha fell instantly.
Muskets boomed all up and down the line, emitting cotton-ball puffs of black-powder smoke. Unable to locate their adversaries in the thick brush, Salazar's cartridges being smokeless, the Choshas fired blindly. Salazar shifted his aim to the next attacker and fired; down it went without a squawk. A third fell likewise.
With an outburst of cawing and croaking, the other Choshas in the skirmish line ran back to the safer place where their comrades held their mounts. There were somewhere between a dozen and a score of them. Salazar could see them conferring while they recharged their muzzle-loaders. Some excited tisais ran round and round their handlers, entangling them in their leashes.
Kara said: "Over there to the left, Keith, I think one is crawling toward us on his belly."
"Amerind tactics," muttered Salazar. "A smart Kook." He held his fire until he thought he saw the Chosha's head. "Damn! I pulled too quick and missed. That leaves us—let me think—six rounds."
The Choshas were still conferring in a distant clump. Kara said: "Couldn't you shoot into them from here?"
"The gun would carry easily enough; but I couldn't pick off individuals. Now they're starting to spread out more widely. I see what they're planning to do—go up and down stream, cross over out of range on both sides of us, and come at us from all sides." He chewed his lip, then said: "Kara, quick, stoke up the fire! Then pull those cartridges out of Bergen's bandoleer and pile 'em near the fire; not too close. And first take the pot and the tripod off!"
Kara stoked the fire with the rest of the collected firewood and then set to work on the bandoleer. Salazar aimed toward the creeping Kook. Waiting until the Chosha half rose and brought up its musket, Salazar fired. The Kook disappeared, but there was a thrashing in the shrubbery.
"Winged that one, anyway," he growled. "Five rounds left. How're you coming?"
Kara had removed all the cartridges from their sleeves and was trying to move the pot. But the additional fuel had caused the fire to blaze up, so that it was hard to lift the vessel without getting burned.
"Ouch! That thing's hot!"
"Should have told you to move it first. Use the belt to handle it, dunk the ironware in the stream to cool it, and start downstream, taking all our stuff. Keep your head below the level of the banks."
"But—"
"Don't argue; I know what I'm doing!"
Kara set off, bending low. Salazar poked up the fire, added a couple of branches, and picked up a double handful of the big-gun cartridges. He dumped them on the fire and quickly added the rest of the pile to the flames. Then, snatching up the rifle, he ran crouching after Kara.
Downstream they went with reckless speed, leaping obstacles, stumbling, recovering, and pushing on. Behind them, one of the fourteen-millimeter cartridges exploded, then another, then a whole fusillade. The Choshas' muskets answered, firing in the direction of the sound.
When Salazar and Kara stopped to catch a belated breath, half a kilometer beyond the fire, they could still hear an occasional boom of Bergen's huge cartridges and the answering reports from the Choshas' muskets.
At length they resumed their flight, though at a more moderate pace. But of the Choshas they saw no more.
V – THE MUSEUM
Salazar said: "Kara, if I remember the local maps, this stream is the Yukke. It flows into the Tsugaa, which joins the Sappari. If we go downstream to the Sappari, we can follow it up to its junction with the Mozii, and then we shall be home."
"Won't that mean a big detour?"
"Maybe; but I don't know any more direct route to Nomuru from here. We should hike even farther if we get lost and wander in circles."
"I hope our food holds out," said Kara with a sigh of exhaustion.
Painfully, they picked up their packs and continued downstream. They no longer tried to scramble through the stream bed, alternately sandy and rocky. Instead, they walked along the edge of the gallery forest, now and then pushing through the vegetation to make sure they were still paralleling the brook.
As the sun clung to the western horizon, they stopped. At this point, the stream had carved out a mirror-still pool, reflecting the overarching greenery. As they came out on the bank, a red-spotted brown thing half a meter long scuttled on four webbed fins or stumpy limbs—it moved too fast to tell which— into the water and vanished with a plop. "What's that?" asked Kara.
"The locals call it a nazikuna, and it has a scientific name as long as your arm. You could call it a fish in the process of evolving into a salamander—or rather, the Kukulcanian equivalents of those organisms—like some of the Terran Gobiidae."
"Huh?"
Salazar chuckled. "Professorial lecturing is a hard habit to break. I mean those little critters called mud skippers. Now, how about a bath? We can wash ourselves and rinse out our clothes here, and our ancestral spirits know we could use it. Come on, take 'em off!" He began to unzip.
She looked at him with her level, greenish-gray-eyed gaze. "No, Keith."
"It's only a friendly suggestion, nothing more. After all, we—"
"That's just it. Your intentions may be as pure as the snows of Mount Nezumi; but once we were splashing around together, your mind would be fighting the pubic wars."
"Well, could you blame me? You're such a ravish-able—"
Kara frowned. "No! And I really mean it."
"Afraid you might yield to my lecherous advances?" Clowning, Salazar twisted one end of his mustache.
"If you really want to know, I'm afraid I might snatch up a rock and cave in your skull. That would leave me alone in this wilderness, to be eaten by some exotic creature."
"At least the beast would show good taste."
She interrupted. "We can wash separately. Would that thing we saw bite us?"
"No; it lives on bugs and worms, not gorgeous Terran women."
"All right, then; you go back to the edge of the forest and start our supper. Take the matches, and don't waste any. And don't come to see how I'm doing!"
"Oh, all right," said Salazar.
He was stirring the porridge when Kara reappeared in her underwear and boots, carrying her khakis. She hung the wet garments on branches near the fire, saying: "I'll take over the cooking now, Keith."
"Okay. I'm afraid this is all we have to eat until we get home. I don't dare spend our few remaining cartridges on hunting game." He quoted:
Salazar went back to the stream, stripped, plunged, shivered, and set about scrubbing what mud he could from his ragged clothing. From force of habit, he kept an eye out for ancient artifacts. A fragment of pale stone caught his eye; he picked it up and found it a piece of worked flint. He was tucking his find into the pocket of his bush jacket when he heard a scream.
"Keith! Help!"
He threw the garment on the bank and bolted through the brush, to view an appalling spectacle. Kara stood with her back to a tree on the edge of the gallery forest, holding Salazar's rifle by the barrel like a club. Before her, hopping and dodging about, stood a huge porondu, like the one that Salazar had ridden. The predator was lunging at Kara with its raptorial yellow beak, which gaped periodically to show big shearing teeth in the back of a rapacious mouth. Each time, as the beak approached, Kara whacked it with the gun butt.