Lankar of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #6
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Lankar of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
...in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar's plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world's edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet - the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves...
The menacing sound reverberated through the long clearing, at one end of which I sat on the fallen log. At the sound, I started violently, sprang to my newly shod feet, and snatched up my heavy staff. Sweat popped out on my forehead and, suddenly, my mouth was drier than before.
However, the sound was not repeated and, as nothing came charging at me from the bushes or dropped snarling from an overhead branch, I relaxed a bit. Almost I managed to convince myself that the sound had only been in my head the result of an overactive imagination.
I was, as I have explained, at one end on a long glade or clearing among the trees. The other end of the clearing lay pretty much in the direction I wished to travel, and, since I could obviously make better time going through the clearing than through the thickly grown trees, I gathered up my bundle of leaves and moved across the grassy space with some haste, thinking to put as much distance between myself and the throat that had uttered that menacing growl as possible, just on the off-chance that the sound had not been a product of my own imagination.
The opposite end of the clearing lay in dense shadows.
From the depths of those shadows, two burning eyes glared at me like blazing coals.
I stopped in my tracks, let go of the leaves, and clenched my cudgel in both hands, like a baseball bat. I’m not ashamed to admit my hands were shaking violently, and that I urgently wished myself far away from this place.
I guess my mind doesn’t function terribly well in moments of extreme stress or danger. I say this because of what popped into my head at that instant. All I could think of was an anecdote about W.C. Fields, probably apocryphaclass="underline" they had asked him what he wanted carved upon his gravestone, and the actor had quipped “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. My sentiments exactly, as I stood there, clutching my flimsy little stick with trembling hands, staring into those eyes of flame!
They blinked, those eyes. Then I heard the growl again. Only this time it had a plaintive note to it―almost a note of entreaty.
I took a cautious step forward; two steps. Now I stood within the shadow myself. My eyes adjusted to the denser gloom … and I saw a strange sight.
Pinned against the thick meadow, grass at the far end of the clearing, lay an immense beast. It looked the size of a full-grown tiger, its burly-shouldered, broad-chested body covered with a supple, short-haired nap of soft fur colored an impossible purple.
It lay there helplessly pinned under a fallen treebranch, its hindquarters pressed into the matted grasses. The branch was as big around as my waist and looked to be extremely heavy. How long the beast had lain there, unable to defend itself against the, approach of another predator I do not know, but from the torn condition of the grasses, the creature had been there for hours, at least. The grasses were ripped and torn out by the roots, exposing raw lavender soil, and apparently the helpless brute had struggled in vain for many hours to free itself from the crushing weight.
Relief gusted through me, for it was obvious that I was in no danger from the fantastic creature. Since this was the first specimen of animal life on Callisto I had yet seen. I lingered to take a good look at it.
As nearly as I could judge, the beast had six legs.
They were short and fat and crooked, like the legs of a bulldog, lending the monster an absurdly bowlegged appearance. Its head was a trifle bulldoggish, too. It was virtually neckless, with a remarkably ugly froglike face, all goggling eyes and wide, batrachian gash of mouth that seemed to stretch from ear to ear. It lay there looking up at me, mouth open, panting from exhaustion or pain, and again there sounded from deep in its chest that growl that was almost a whine of entreaty.
I could not help noticing that the wide, froglike mouth with the powerful, bulging cheeks and heavy, underslung jaw, was armed with plenty of blunt, strong-looking tusks. Jaws like that could make hamburger of a man’s arm in seconds. I could picture my bones being crunched into powder by those heavy, grinding tusks … and it was not a pleasant picture. Luckily for me the big brute was helpless, pinned under that fallen log, and unable to spring upon me, as it would otherwise doubtless have done.
Taking up my extra supply of leaves, I prepared to inch my way around the beast and enter the jungle. As I did so, the brute craned his head around to look at me. The expression in his goggling eyes stopped me. There was suffering in them, and a mute, stoical pleading in the silent gaze the purple beast turned upon me. A pleading which I could not pretend I had not seen. A pleading I could not quite ignore, no matter how reasonable it might seem for me to do so. I stood there for a while, unable to make up my mind to leave.
“Well, you big bozo, you’ve gotten yourself in a tough spot, haven’t you?” I said in a low voice. Almost as if he somehow understood the sympathy in my words. the creature stirred feebly under the crushing weight. Hs huge, blunt forepaws scratched at the bare soil, where he had torn up the grasses in an effort to pull his body out from under the weight which pressed his hindquarters into the ground. He made a little sound deep in his throat, like a whine or whimper, a questioning sound. And all the while he turned upon me those huge, helpless eyes. There was dignity in that `5 mute gaze, and pride. But the pleading was there, and I could not ignore it, being the sort of man I am.
Two things made me do the crazy thing I did next.
The first thing was that I knew, or supposed I knew, what kind of beast it was. It was an othode. Jandar had described these creatures in the manuscript I had read on the plane: purple, short-legged beasts about the size of mastiffs, ferocious but sometimes domesticated for the purposes of hunting.
In other words, something remarkably like the Callistan equivalent of dogs.
Now, as anyone who knows me will certainly testify, I feel about dogs exactly as the late Will Rogers felt about people … to paraphrase his famous motto, “I’ve never met a dog I didn’t like.” Noel and I share our house on Long Island with five members of the species and have raised and found homes for litter after litter of puppies. My wife, in fact, has the nice habit of finding stray dogs and bringing them home to fatten up. It is usually our avowed intention of finding people to adopt these homeless vagabond waifs, but as often as not, by the time we have coaxed back to healthy, plump, waggy-tailed condition the latest homeless mutt, we have fallen for its doggy charms ourselves.
And the othode who lay there begging me with its eyes for help looked an awful lot like a dog.
I just couldn’t pass him by, pretending not to notice those begging eves.
The other thing that made me stop and linger a while was connected to my first reason, you might say. And that was that the othode bore a striking resemblance to one of the dogs Noel and I had rescued from starvation on the streets. This was a dog we called The Mighty McGurk―a big, brown, goggleeyed, fat, bowlegged, cavorting, lovable sort of bullmastiff type to whom we had given our hearts, receiving the gift of his in return.
McGurk occupied a very special place in our affections, and especially in mine.
And the othode looked very much like McGurk. If you can imagine a McGurk grown to the size of an adult tiger, with six legs and bright purple fur.
I put down my cudgel and my bundle of leaves, and squatted on the turf, talking to the poor brute in a quiet voice.
“Well, now, you big bozo, what am I going to do about you, eh? Even if I could get that big log off you, ms’s probably broken your back, you know. And, if it h. n’t once you’re free, you’d probably rip my arm off, wouldn’t you? Hmm?”
The fat, wattled purple throat uttered a distinctly dogggish whine, eager yet verging on a warning note.