"Blish, James - Bindlestiff - txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

УBossЧФ
УEh?Ф
УHow are you going to get us off the ground?Ф
Amalfi could feel his ears turning red, and swore. УI forgot that Twenty-third Street machine. And we canТt get anything suitable into a Hevian rocketЧa pile would fit easily enough, but a frictionator or a dismounted spindizzy wouldnТt, and thereТd be no point in taking popgunsЧMaybe we could gas them.Ф
УExcuse me,Ф Miramon said, Уbut it is not certain that the priests will authorize the use of the rockets. We had best drive over to the temple directly and ask.Ф
УBelsen and bebop!Ф Amalfi said. It was the oldest oath in his repertoire.

TALK, even with electrical aid, was impossible in the rocket. The whole machine roared like a gigantic tamtam to the vibration of the jets. Morosely Amalfi watched Hazleton connecting the mechanism in the nose with the powerleads from the pileЧno mean balancing feat, considering the way the rocket pitched in its passage through the tortured Hevian air currents. The reactor itself had not been filled all the way, since its total capacity could not have been used, and the heavy water sloshed and foamed in the transparent cube.
There had been no difficulty with the priests about the little rocket task force itself. To the end of his life Amalfi was sure that the straightfaced Miramon had invented the need for religious permission, just to get the two Okies back into the ground car again. Still, the discomforts of that ride were small compared to this one.
The pilot shifted his feet on the treadles and the deck pitched. Metal rushed back under AmalfiТs nose, and he found himself looking through misty air at a crazily canted jungle. Something long, thin, and angry flashed over it and was gone. At the same instant there was a piercing inhuman shriek, sharp enough to dwarf for a long instant the song of the rocket.
Then there were more of the same: ptsouiiirrr! ptsouiiirrr! ptsouiiirrr! The machine jerked to each one and now and then shook itself violently, twisting and careening across the jungle-top. Amalfi had never felt so helpless before in his life. He did not even know what the noise was; he could only be sure that it was ill-tempered. The coarse blaam of high explosive, when it began, was recognizableЧthe city had often had occasion to blast on jobsЧbut nothing in his experience went kerchowkerchowkerchowkerchowkerchow like a demented vibratory drill, and the invisible thing that screamed its own pep-yell as it flewЧeeeeeeeeyowKRCHKackackarackarackarackaЧseemed wholly impossible.
He was astonished to discover that the hull around him was stippled with small holes, real holes with the slipstream fluting over them. It took him what seemed to be three weeks to realize that the whooping and cheer-leading which meant
nothing to him was riddling the ship and threatening to kill him any second.
Someone was shaking him. He lurched to his knees, trying to unfreeze his eyeballs.
УAmalfi! Ainalfi!Ф The voice, though it was breathing on his ear, was parsecs away. УPick your spot, quick! TheyТll have us shot down in aЧФ
Something burst outside and threw Amalfi to the deck. Doggedly he crawled to the port and peered down through the shattered plastic. The bandit Hevian city swooped past, upside down. He was sick suddenly, and the city was lost in a web of tears. The second time it came he managed to see which building had the heaviest guard, and pointed, choking.
The rocket threw its tailfeathers over the nearest cloud and bored beak-first for the ground. Amalfi hung on to the edge of the suddenly-blank deck port, his own blood spraying back in a fine mist into his face from his cut fingers.
УNow!Ф
Nobody heard, but Hazleton saw his nod. A blast of pure heat blew through the upended cabin as the pile blew off the shielded nose of the rocket. Even through the top of his head, the violet-white light of that soundless concussion nearly blinded Amalfi, and he could feel the irradiation of his shoulders and chest. He would have no colds for the next two or three years, anyhowЧevery molecule of histamine in his blood must have been detoxified at that instant.
The rocket yawed wildly, and then came under control again. The ordnance noises had already quit, cut off at the moment of the flash.
The bandit city was blind.
The sound of the jets cut off, and Amalfi understood for the first time what an Уaching voidФ might be. The machine fell into a steep glide, the air howling dismally outside it. Another rocket, under the guidance of one of HazletonТs assistants, dived down before it, scything a narrow runway in the jungle with a mesotron rifleЧfor the bandit towns kept no supersonic no-plantТs-land between themselves and the rank vegetation.
The moment the rocket stopped moving, Amalfi and a handpicked squad of Okies and Hevians were out of it and slogging through the muck. From inside the bandit city drifted a myr
iad of screamsЧhuman screams now, screams of agony and terror, from men who thought themselves blinded for life. Amalfi had no doubt that many of them were. Certainly anyone who had had the misfortune to be looking at the sky when the pile had converted itself into photons would never see again.
But the law of chance would have protected most of the renegades, so speed was vital. The mud built up heavy pads under his shoes, and the jungle did not thin out until they hit the townТs wall itself.
The gates had been rusted open years ago, and were choked with greenery. The Hevians hacked their way through it with practiced knives and cunning.
Inside, the going was still almost as thick. The city proper presented a depressing face of proliferating despair. Most of the buildings were completely enshrouded in vines, and many were halfway toward ruins. Iron-hard tendrils had thrust their way between stones, into windows, under cornices, up drains and chimney funnels. Poison-green, succulent leaves plastered themselves greedily upon every surface, and in shadowed places there were huge blood-colored fungi which smelled like a man six days dead; the sweetish taint hung heavily in the air. Even the paving blocks had sproutedЧ inevitably, since, whether by ignorance or laziness, most of them had been cut from green wood.
The screaming began to die into whimpers. Amalfi did his best to keep from inspecting the inhabitants. A man who believes he has just been blinded permanently is not a pretty sight, even when he is wrong. Yet it was impossible not to notice the curious mixture of soiled finery and gleamingly clean nakedness; it was as if two different periods had mixed in the city, as if a gathering of Hruntan nobles had been sprinkled with Noble Savages. Possibly the men who had given in completely to the jungle had also slid back far enough to discover the pleasures of bathingЧif so, they would shortly discover the pleasures of the mud-wallow, too, and would not look so noble after that.
УAmalfi, here they areЧФ
The mayorТs suppressed pity for the blinded men evaporated when he got a look at the imprisoned Okies. They had been
systematically mauled to begin with, and after that sundry little attentions had been paid to them which combined the best features of savagery and decadence. On~ of them, mercifully, had been strangled by his comrades early in the Уtrial.Ф Another, a basket case, should have been rescued, for he could still talk rationally, but he pleaded so persistently for death that Amalfi had him shot in a sudden fit of sentimentality. Of the other three men, all could walk and talk, but two were mad. The catatonic was carried out on a stretcher, and the manic was gagged and led gingerly away.
УHow did you do it?Ф asked the rational man in Russian, the dead universal language of deep space. He was a human skeleton, but he radiated a terrific personal force. He had lost his tongue early in the Уquestioning,Ф but had already taught himself to talk by the artifical methodЧthe result was inhuman, but it was intelligible. УThey were coming down to kill us as soon as they heard your jets. Then there was a sort of a flash, and they all started screamingЧa pretty sound, let me tell you.Ф
УIТll bet,Ф Amalfi said. УThat Сsort of a flashТ was a photon explosion. It was the only way we could figure on being sure of getting you out alive. We thought of trying gas, but if they had had gas masks they would have been able to kill you anyhow.Ф
УI havenТt seen any masks, but IТm sure they have them. There are traveling volcanic gas clouds in this part of the planet, they say; they must have evolved some absorption device-charcoal is well known here. Lucky we were so far underground, or weТd be blind, too, then. You people must be engineers.Ф
УMore or less,Ф Amalfi agreed. УStrictly, weТre miners and petroleum geologists, but weТve developed a lot of sidelines since weТve been aloftЧlike any Okie. HereТs our rocketЧ crawl in. ItТs rough, but itТs transportation. How about you?Ф
УAgronomists. Our mayor thought there was a field for it out here along the peripheryЧteaching the abandoned colonies and the offshoots how to work poisoned soil and manage lowyield crops without heavy machinery. Our sideline was waxmans.Ф
УWhat are those?Ф Amalfi said, adjusting the harness around the wasted body.
УSoil-source antibiotics. It was those the bindlestiff wanted
Чand got. The filthy swine. They canТt bother to keep a reasonably sanitary city; theyТd rather pirate some honest outfit for drugs when they have an epidemic. Oh, and they wanted germanium, too, of course. They blew us up when they found we didnТt have anyЧweТd converted to a barter economy as soon as we got out of the last commerce lanes.Ф
УWhat about your passenger?Ф Amalfi said with studied nonchalance.
УDr. Beetle? Not that that was his name, I couldnТt pronounce that even when I had my tongue. I donТt imagine he survived; we had to keep him in a tank even in the city, and I canТt quite see him living through a life-ship journey. He was a Myrdian, smart cookies all of them, too. That no-fuel drive of hisЧФ
Outside, a shot cracked, and Amalfi winced. УWeТd best get offЧtheyТre getting their eyesight back~ Talk to you later. Hazleton, any incidents?Ф
УNothing to speak of, boss. Everybody stowed?Ф
УYep. Kick off.Ф
There was a volley of shots, and then the rocket coughed, roared, and stood on its tail. Amalfi pulled a deep sigh loose from the acceleration and turned his head toward the rational man.
He was still securely strapped in, and looked quite relaxed. A brassnosed slug had come through the side of the ship next to him and had neatly removed the top of his skull.

IV.
WORKING information out of the madmen was a painfully long, anxious process. The manic was a threehundred-fifty-hour case, and even after he had been returned to a semblance of rationality he could contribute very little.
The life ship had not come to He because of the cityТs Dirac warning, he said. The life ship and the burned Okie had not had any Dirac equipment. The life ship had come to He, as Amalfi had predicted, because it was the only possible planetfall in the desert of the Rift. Even so, the refugees had had to use deep-sleep and strict starvation rationing to make it.