Planet Stories Super Pack #2. Ray Bradbury, Nelson S. Bond, Leigh Brackett

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СКАЧАТЬ held up three fingers. Then he turned and started down the gully. The girl stayed close beside him. She was breathing rapidly and her pupils swelled and shrank. They showed no fear.

      Looking at them, Kirk thought of Lil. Lil was right. She did have pink lids to her eyes, and they were beautiful.

      The shags followed them, two behind, three beside them beyond a thin wall of rock.

      Kirk had never been in the outer gullies before. He was too young. But he’d heard Pa and the older men talk about them from the time he was old enough to crouch beside the heat-stones and listen.

      Out here there were shags and scavenger rats and once in a while a rocksnake. Men of the settlement never hunted beyond the fringe. Beyond that was forbidden ground and Piruts. Nobody knew just where the Pirut colony was any more. Nobody wanted to know.

      Kirk’s ears were stretched, sifting the tiny shattered echoes. His spread pupils sucked in every bit of the dim grey light. His body hair was erect so that even his skin acted as a sensory organ, feeling the bodies of the shags behind them.

      They were getting close.

      The gully ended. Beyond it was a little space of tumbled rock with other gullies opening into it, and then a cliff built of great tilted slabs of grey stone.

      Kirk pointed to the cliff and started to run, with the yellow girl beside him. Wind slashed sharp and thin across them. The echoes whispered like many tongues and Kirk fought them and heard the two shags come onto the plain behind them, running.

      The other three came out of the parallel cut. They came fast, and because of the curve of the plain they were a little ahead of the two humans.

      The girl said between her teeth, "We can’t make it."

      She was right. Kirk picked out the biggest boulder he could see and dashed for it. The leading shag was breathing on the girl’s heels as he hauled her up after him.

      They were safe for a while, but it didn’t do them any good. In this world even shags would wait forever at the prospect of a square meal. Presently they’d start climbing and when they did it was all over. Kirk didn’t even have a weapon with which to fight.

      He looked down at them. Five squat thick shapes with six legs; four powerful legs with claws and two slender ones held in against the chest, armed with sucker discs for climbing. Five pairs of black eyes watching, hungry and infinitely patient. Five tucked bellies burning under pale, shaggy hair.

      He was looking at death. A strange cold terror took him. He turned his head toward the yellow girl and saw the same thing in her eyes. They looked at each other, not moving nor breathing, thinking that they were young and going to die.

      He shivered. The girl’s yellow body burned in the grey light. He moved. He didn’t know why, only that he had to. He took her in his arms and found her lips and kissed them, roughly, with an urgent, painful hunger. She fought him a little and then lay still against him.

      One of the shags started to climb. Kirk saw it across the girl’s shoulder. He let her go and walked to the boulder’s edge and waited until the shaggy head was level with his feet. Then he crouched and struck, in a way he had never struck before. Blood spurted across his fist. The shag roared and fell backward clumsily, shaking its head. Kirk stood up and sucked in his belly and yelled. He felt savage now, but not afraid. The echoes howled eerily.

      The shag started up again, and two more came with him.

      There was something queer about the echoes. They got louder and wilder. Men’s voices, shouting. Kirk couldn’t look, but he heard the yellow girl cry:

      "Piruts!"

      *

      He heard them coming closer, bare feet scrambling on rock. The shags came higher. He struck down, left and right. One beast lost hold with one sucker and fell into another, knocking it loose. They fell, clawing each other. The third came on. Kirk hit it. It slid its head aside and caught his wrist.

      The pain blinded him. He roared and beat at it, but the grip on his wrist pulled him to his knees and almost over the edge. The brute started back down the boulder, taking Kirk with him.

      The yellow girl slid suddenly in under Kirk and reached over and took hold of the shag’s snout and peeled it back. The beast snuffled and squealed and chewed on Kirk’s arm. The girl twisted harder. Blood began to spill down over the shag’s teeth.

      It let go. Kirk began to hear slingstones whistle. The shag bellowed and took itself back down the rock, fast. The others were scattering away across the plain, driven by stones from expert slingers. Kirk and the girl crouched quietly, trembling and breathing hard.

      Somebody called cheerfully, "You might as well come down now."

      Kirk supposed they might as well. He climbed down, streaming blood from his torn wrist, with the girl scrambling beside him. The hackles were raised across her yellow shoulders.

      Piruts. Kirk thought about Pa and Russ and Frank being driven up that tongue of naked rock. Their own people had killed them, but the Piruts put them there in the first place. And there was Jakk. Besides....

      They were Piruts. That was enough. Kirk felt numb inside. It might have been easier if the shags had got them, after all.

      The man who had called them was waiting, lounging back against a rock. He was no taller than Kirk, but he was a lot thicker and his hair was red. The bones of his face were heavy and brutal under his beard. His horny overlids were dropped so that only bright black slits showed of his eyes. He was smiling. It was a lazy, white-toothed, cheerful smile, but Kirk didn’t like. It made his belly knot up.

      "What," said the Pirut, "the hell are you two kids doing out here?"

      "Hunting," said Kirk shortly. There were a lot of Piruts among the tumbled rocks. Four, five hands of them.

      The red Pirut had stopped looking at Kirk. He was looking at the Captain’s yellow daughter. "Well," he said. "Well, well!" He took himself away from the rock and came toward them. He moved slowly, as though he might be sleepy. Kirk didn’t like that, either.

      He said, "Let us go. We haven’t anything to steal."

      The Pirut chuckled. "I’m not so sure about that." He was still looking at the yellow girl. "No," he said. "I’m not sure about that at all."

      He raised his hand and called the others in. Kirk knew he couldn’t fight; he followed the leader.

      *

      It was a lot colder in the Pirut cave than it was back in the huts of the colony. Everybody kept close together for warmth, crowded around the scanty heat-stones. There was a moaning draft from somewhere that kept Kirk’s hair stirring, and there were babies crying. Babies that didn’t sound any different from the one at home.

      Kirk chewed up the last of his handful of pemmican, made of shag meat and sour berries, and was thankful for a full belly. The yellow girl crouched on the cold stone, not saying anything, her arms around her knees. The Pirut women watched her out of hostile eyes.

      Samel, the red Pirut who had turned out to be some sort of an Officer, watched her too, but his eyes were not hostile.

      "Close-mouthed piece, aren’t you?" he said. He threw a scrap СКАЧАТЬ