Monument. Lloyd Biggle jr.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ hatch, and the ship’s company began to descend. The Langri had said there would be both men and women, but because of the strange costumes they wore, Fornri had difficulty in distinguishing them.

      He picked out the leader at once: a short, fat man to whom others came for instructions. As the leader surveyed the scene about him, to Fornri’s gaping astonishment he blew a cloud of red smoke from his mouth.

      “It is a pretty place,” he said.

      “Pretty?” one of the others exclaimed. “It’s a paradise. Look at that beach!”

      A slender man with bushy hair on his face came down the ramp and began to talk with the leader. They walked back and forth together with so much arm movement that Fornri wondered if this was part of their language.

      The sea breeze carried their spoken words to him clearly. Bushy-face said, “We can’t leave without investigating those natives. Crystals only make you rich. Something like this would make you famous. Primitive humans! How could they have got to this out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy? I must have a look at that village!”

      “Have a look, then,” the leader said. “Since I’m chartered as a scientific expedition, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few scientific results just in case someone asks what we’ve been doing. You can have an hour.”

      The leader turned to another man, who was performing mysterious rites with a strange black object that he held in his two hands. “I wish you wouldn’t wear that gold tooth when I’m taking readings,” the man said. “For a moment I thought I had a gold strike.”

      “No metals at all?” the leader asked.

      The other shrugged. “Oh well—those natives may use copper spear points, but no one will ever run a mining concession on this world.”

      “How come you picked up retron interference?”

      “I told you there couldn’t possibly be retron crystals on this type of planet unless someone brought them here. I did pick up the interference. Maybe it’s still there and the terrain is masking it. Or maybe the meters burped when they shouldn’t have.”

      The leader turned away disgustedly. “Another landing shot on nothing. For your information, setting this crate down and taking off again costs money.” He raised his voice. “Captain?”

      A man in a different type of clothing appeared in the airlock. “Yes, Mr. Wembling?”

      “We’ll lift in an hour. Break out the stun guns. Those wanting to stretch their legs are to stay in groups, and they’re not to get out of hailing distance of the ship. I want one stun gun with every group, and that’s an order. I also want an armed sentry here at the ship.” He turned to the others, most of whom were looking longingly at the sea. “And no swimming. An unknown world can be damned dangerous. You’ve seen the list of precautions. Follow it.”

      The captain waved a hand and ducked back into the ship. The leader spoke to the man with the black object. “Take a group and scout around with that hand detector—just in case the retron interference was real.”

      Groups began to form and head off in different directions. The bushy-faced man led one toward the village. It passed quite near to Fornri, who studied its members carefully and puzzled over the strangely shaped weapon one of them carried. The Langri had described such things, but none of his students believed what he told them.

      Twenty strides toward the village, one of the group turned aside suddenly, leaped into a clump of bushes, and dragged out—Dalla, kicking and screaming. Fornri leaped to his feet in consternation and then quickly dropped out of sight. He had not known Dalla had followed him, and it was a contingency the Langri’s Plan did not provide for, but Fornri did not hesitate. While Dalla continued to struggle and occupied the men’s full attention, he moved stealthily toward them.

      The man who captured her was laughing. “I like this world better and better. I hope there’s enough of these to go around.”

      “Let’s take her to the ship,” Bushy-face said. “I want to see what sort of language she speaks.”

      The other answered, “That isn’t what I want to see.”

      Fornri was near enough to charge. He crashed into the man holding Dalla and knocked him sprawling. The others immediately grappled with Fornri, and all of them tumbled into a heap while Dalla quickly vanished into the forest. Three of the men pulled Fornri to his feet and held him, and another restrained

      Dalla’s captor, who was furiously angry and attempting to assault Fornri.

      “Never mind,” Bushy-face said. “He’ll do as well as the woman.”

      “Not for me, he won’t!”

      “Let’s take him to the ship,” Bushy-face said. “We can look at the village later.”

      As they approached the ship, the leader came to meet them. “What do you want with a native?” he asked disgustedly.

      “I want to find out something about him,” the bushy-faced man said. “His features are Abdolynian, and I think I have some language keys.”

      “With all the interesting things crawling in that ocean, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on humans. There are life forms there I don’t believe even when I’m looking at them. I didn’t need to worry about anyone sneaking a swim.” He turned to a man who was quietly following him about. “Hirus, what are the chances those freaks might be worth money?”

      “The only ones interested would be museums and animalariums,” the other said. “They haven’t got money. If you donated a few of them, no doubt they’d be pleased to name a choice specimen after you. That thing with all the legs and the long neck—how’d you like to have it called genus Wemblous?”

      The fat man shuddered.

      Bushy-face had darted up the walkway to the ship while the others held onto Fornri. Now he returned with another sort of strange black object. He held it in front of Fornri, pressed some of the gleaming protuberances—and the thing spoke! It said, “Fraugh, villick, lascrouf, boumarl, caciss, denlibdra.”

      Bushy-face was watching Fornri intently. “Those are key words,” he said. “If he’s Abdolynian, he ought to be able to understand at least one of them.”

      Fornri, comprehending that he’d been expected to make meaning of the strange sounds, suppressed a smile.

      One of the men exclaimed, “Look at the puggard! He’s laughing at you! He understands Galactic!”

      Suddenly Fornri bolted, slipping from their grasps, knocking over the sentry who was pacing an aimless circle about the ship, and getting away cleanly. He outdistanced the pursuit and reached the forest safely. Dalla had been watching. She was waiting for him just inside the forest, and the two of them quickly placed its comfortably thick vegetation between themselves and the strangers’ weapons. They hurried toward the Forest Village.

      There a crowd of terrified adults clustered about the Langri’s hammock. Women and men were wailing in turn, “Langri, a thing-from-the-sky! What shall we do?”

      The Langri lay deathly still, but as Fornri and Dalla pushed through to him, his eyes opened and he muttered, “Too late.”

      “The СКАЧАТЬ