A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1969
- Язык: английский
- Год: Curtis Books
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales». Краткое содержание книги:
The Osmanians were subdued for a while. At Gettysburg they went into the exhibition building. From the gallery they looked down upon a relief map of the Gettysburg region covered with colored electric lights. A phonograph record gave an account of the battle while a young man worked a set of keys that lit the lights to show the positions of the Federal and Confederate troops at various times:
"Now, at the beginning of the second day, Longstreet spent the morning ranging his artillery around the salient where the Third Corps occupied the peach orchard." (Lights blinked on.) "At noon the Confederates began a bombardment, and McLaws' Division advanced ..."
There was a stir among the spectators as the Osmanians wormed their way into the front row and hung their tentacles over the rail. The young man working the lights lost track of his keys and sat gaping while the recording ground on. Then he tried to catch up, became confused, and for a time had Meade's Federals in full retreat.
Reid led his guests outside. They climbed the observation tower, from which they saw the Round Tops and the Eisenhower Memorial rising from the farm which that President had owned. When Reid and his wife started down, Sterga blubbered something at Thvi. The next thing, the Osmanians were scrambling down the outside of the steelwork.
"Come back! You'll be killed!" yelled Reid.
"No danger," called back Sterga. "This is more fun."
The Reids clattered down the stairs. Reid expected to hear the plop of an Osmanian striking the concrete. He got to the bottom just ahead of the Osmanians, who slid from girder to girder with the greatest ease.
Milan Reid sat down on the bottom step and pressed his fists against his head. Then he said in a hollow voice: "Let's eat lunch."
At the Rose Hill Swimming Pool, Wallace Richards, the lifeguard, was showing off his dives. He was a young man of vast thews and vaster vanity. Girls sat around the pool watching, while other young men, all looking either skinny or potbellied by contrast, gloomed in the background.
The Forellians had swum in the morning but now had gone away. While they were there, there had been no room for anybody else in the pool. Now there were no extra-terrestrials until Milan and Louise Reid came out in bathing suits, followed by Sterga and Thvi. Reid spread a blanket and prepared to settle down to a sunbath.
The Osmanians aroused the usual stir. Wallace Richards never noticed. He stood tautly, tapering from shoulders to ankles like an inverted isosceles triangle, while he gathered Ms forces for a triple flip.
Thvi slipped into the pool and shot across it with a swirl of tentacles. Richards bounded off the board, clasped his knees, turned over three times, and straightened out. He came down on top of Thvi.
Sterga shouted in his own language, but too late. Then he too entered the water. The watchers cried out.
The surface of the pool was beaten by thrashing limbs and tentacles. Richards' head appeared, shouting:
"Damn it, give me back my trunks!"
The Osmanians whipped across the pool and shot out. Thvi waved Richards' trunks (little more than a G-string) in one tentacle and called: "You will jump on top of me, will you?"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" screamed Richards. The audience began to laugh.
"Knocked all the breath out of me, guk-guk-guk," bubbled Thvi, trying to work a couple of her tentacles through the leg-holes.
Sterga scrambled up the ladder to the high-diving board. "Earthman!" he called down. "How did you do that jump?"
"Give me back my trunks!"
"Like this?" Sterga leaped off the board.
However, instead of diving, he spread all twelve tentacles and came down on Richards like a pouncing spider. Richards ducked before the apparition descended on him and began to swim away. But his speed in the water was as nought compared to the Osmanian's. Sterga caught him and began tickling him.
Reid said to Thvi: "For God's sake, make that mate of yours let the man go! He'll drown him."
"Oh, all right. You Earthmen never want any fun." Thvi swam over to where the pair were struggling.
A limp Richards was hauled out and laid on the concrete. Somebody pumped his lungs for ten minutes until he came around and sat up, coughing and gasping. When he pulled himself together he glared about and wheezed: "Where are those God-damned octopussies? I'll ..."
Reid and his charges had left.
For cocktails, the Reids had an older couple in: Professor and Mrs. Hamilton Beach, of Bryn Mawr College. Beach, a sociologist, wanted to talk about such serious matters as interspecies relations, but Sterga and Thvi had other ideas. They swallowed their cocktails so fast that Reid could do little but mix new ones. They made horrible noises which, they explained, were an Osmanian song.
Reid worried lest they get drunk and become even more obstreperous, but Sterga reassured him: "These are nothing to what we drink on N6hp. There anything less than four-fifths alcohol is a — how would you say it — a light-wines-and-beer."
The Reids eased the Beaches out at seven so as to have time to eat and get to the strawberry festival. Reid went back into the living room to find Sterga and Thvi drinking alternately out of the shaker. Sterga said:
"Mr. Reid, I understand you people have the same reproductive methods we have."
"Uh — well — that depends on your method," said Reid, appalled by the turn of the conversation.
"You do reproduce bisexually, don't you? The male carries ..."
"Yes, yes, yes."
"Why haven't you and Mrs. Reid done so?" Reid bit his lip. "We have. Our son is away at camp, as a counsellor."
"Ah, that is fine. Then you can comply with the custom of the Hliht."
"What custom?"
"We always trade mates with our guests. It is inhospitable not to."
"What?"
Sterga repeated.
Reid goggled. "You — you're not serious?"
"Certainly. It will be —"
"But that's physically impossible, even if our customs allowed it."
"No, we are not so different as you might think. I have investigated the matter. Anyway, we can have a lot of fun experimenting, guk-guk."
"Out of the question!" snapped Reid. "Our customs forbid it."
"You Earthmen want that mining lease, don't you? Well then?"
"Excuse me," said Reid, and went into the kitchen. There Louise was helping the temporary maid to put the final touches on the dinner. He drew her aside and explained the latest demand of their guests.
Louise Reid goggled in her turn. She opened the door to get a glimpse of Sterga in the living room. Sterga caught her eye and winked. This was an unnerving spectacle, as the Osmanians blinked their eyes by withdrawing them into their heads and popping them up again.
She turned away and pressed her hands over her face. "What shall we do?"
"Well, I — I can tell you one thing. I'm going to get rid of these so-called guests. If I ever catch R. J ..."
"But what about the mining concession?" ' "To hell with the mining concession. I don't care if it causes an interplanetary war; I won't put up with these rubber jokers any longer. I hate the sight of them."
"But how? You can't just push them out the front door to wander the streets!"
"Let me think." Reid glanced out the window to make sure the Zieglers' lights were on. "I know; we'll give them to the Zieglers! It'll serve both of them right."
"Oh, darling, do you think we ought? After all ..."
"I don't care if we ought or not. First, you'll get a wire that your mother is sick and you have to pack and leave for Washington tonight ... Start serving; I'll set the wheels in motion."
Reid went to the telephone and called his friend Joe Farris. "Joe?" he said in a low voice. "Will you ring me back in fifteen minutes? Then don't pay any attention to what I say; it's to get me out of a jam."