"Anderson, Poul - 1964 Nicholas Van Rijn 02 - Trader to the Stars 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

things. Not that adequate hands prove effective intelli-
gence; on Earth, not only simians but a number of reptiles
and amphibia boast as much, even if man has the best,
and man's apish ancestors were as well-equipped in this
respect as we are today. However, the round fiat-faced
heads of these beings, the large bright eyes beneath feath-
ery antennae of obscure function, the small jaws and
delicate lips, all looked promising.
Promising of what? thought Torrance.
Tlree Earth-days later, he hurried down a central cor-
ridor toward the Ekser engine room.
The passage was a great hemicylinder lined with the
same rubbery gray plastic as the cages, so that footfalls
were silent and spoken words weirdly unresonant. But a
deeper vibration went through it, the almost subliminal
drone of the hyperengine, driving the ship into darkness
toward an unknown star, and announcing their presence
to any hunter straying within a light-year of them. The
fluoros strung by the, humans were far apart, so that one
passed through bands of humming shadow. Doorless
rooms opened off the hallway. Some were still full of
supplies, and however peculiar the shape of tools and con-
tainers might be, however unguessable their purpose, this
was a reassurance that one still lived, was not yet a ghost
aboard the Flying Dutchman. Other cabins, however, had
been inhabited. And their bareness made Torrance's skin
crawl.
Nowhere did a personal trace remain. Books, both folio
and micro, survived, but in the finely printed symbology
of a foreign planet. Empty places on the shelves suggested
that all illustrated volumes had been sacrificed. Certainly
one could se~ where pictures stuck on the walls had been
ripped down. In the big private cabins, in the still larger
one which might have been a saloon, as well as in the
engine room and workshop and bridge, only the bollards
to which furniture had been bolted were left. Long low
niches and small cubbyholes were built into the cabin
bulkheads, but when all bedding had been thrown into
a white-hot cauldron, how could one guess which were the
bunks. . . if either kind were? Clothing, ornaments, cook-
ing and eating utensils, everything was destroyed. One
room must have been a lavatory, but all the facilities had
been ripped out. Another might have been used for scien-
tific studies, presumably of captured animals, but was so
gutted that no human was certain.
By God, you've got to admire them, Torrance thought.
Captured by beings whom they had every reason to'
think of as conscienceless monsters, the aliens had not
taken the easy way out, the atomic explosion that would
annihilate both crews. They might have, except for the