"Blish, James - Earth of Hours" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

interpretation. 12-Upjohn found himself at a loss; not only
was the statement the most staggering he had ever heard
from any sentient being, but while it was being made he had
discovered how the Callean spoke: the sounds issued at low
volume from a multitude of spiracles or breath-holes all
along the body, each hole producing only one pure tone,
the words and intonations being formed in mid-air by inter-
modulationa miracle of co-ordination among a multitude
of organs obviously unsuitable for sound-forming at all. This
thing was formidablethat would have been evident even
without the lesson of the chunk of the Novae Washington-
grad canted crazily in the sands behind them.
Sands? He looked about with a start. Until that moment
the Callean had so hypnotized his attention that he had for-
gotten to look at the landscape, but his unconscious had
registered it. Sand, and nothing but sand. If there were
better parts of Calle than this desert, they were not visible
from here, all the way to the horizon.
"What do you propose to do with us?" he said at last
There was really nothing else to say; cut off in every possible
sense from his home world, he no longer had any base from
which to negotiate.
"Nothing," the Callean said. "You are free to come and
go as you please."
"You're no longer afraid of us?"
"No. When you came to kill me I prevented you, but you
can no longer do that."
"There you've made a mistake, all right," Oberholzer said,
lifting his rifle toward the multicolored, glittering jewels of
the Callean's eyes. "You know what this isthey must have
had them on the Dragon."
"Don't be an idiot, Sergeant," 12-Upjohn said sharply.
"We're in no position to make any threats." Nor, he added
silently, should the Marine have called attention to his gun
before the Callean had taken any overt notice of it.
"I know what it is," the creature said. "You cannot kill
me with that. You tried it often before and found you could
not. You would remember this if you were not sick."
"I never saw anything that I couldn't kill with a Sussmann
flamer," Oberholzer said between his teeth. "Let me try it
on the bastard, Your Excellency."
"Wait a minute," Robin One said, to 12-Upjohn's astonish-
ment. "I want to ask some questionsif you don't mind,
Your Excellency?"
"I don't mind," 12-Upjohn said after an instant. Anything
to get the Marine's crazy impulse toward slaughter side-
tracked. "Go ahead."
"Did you dissect the crew of the Assam Dragon person-
ally?" Robin asked the Callean.
"Of course."