"Brown, Fredric - Arena UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Fredric)

СCan we not have peace between us?Т he said, his voice strange in the stillness. СThe Entity who brought us here has told us what must happen if our races fight Ч extinction of one and weakening and retrogression of the other. The battle between them, said the Entity, depends upon what we do here. Why cannot we agree to an eternal peace Ч your race to its galaxy, we to ours?Т
Carson blanked out his mind to receive a reply.
It came, and it staggered him back, physically. He recoiled several steps in sheer horror at the intensity of the lust-to-kill of the red images projected at him. For a moment that seemed eternity he had to struggle against the impact of that hatred, fighting to clear his mind of it and drive out the alien thoughts to which he had given admittance. He wanted to retch.
His mind cleared slowly. He was breathing hard and he felt weaker, but he could think.
He stood studying the Roller. It had been motionless during the mental duel it had so nearly won. Now it rolled a few feet to one side, to the nearest of the blue bushes. Three tentacles whipped out of their grooves and began to investigate the bush.
СO.K.,Т Carson said, Сso itТs war then.Т He managed a grin. СIf I got your answer straight, peace doesnТt appeal to you.Т And, because he was, after all, a young man and couldnТt resist the impulse to be dramatic, he added, СTo the death!Т
But his voice, in that utter silence, sounded silly even to himself. It came to him, then, that this was to the death, not only his own death or that of the red spherical thing which he thought of as the Roller, but death to the entire race of one or the other of them: the end of the human race, if he failed.
It made him suddenly very humble and very afraid to think that. With a knowledge that was above even faith, he knew that the Entity who had arranged this duel had told the truth about its intentions and its powers. The future of humanity depended upon him. It was an awful thing to
realize. He had to concentrate on the situation at hand.
There had to be some way of getting through the barrier, or of killing through the barrier.
Mentally? He hoped that wasnТt all, for the Roller obviously had stronger telepathic powers than the undeveloped ones of the human race. Or did it?
He had been able to drive the thoughts of the Roller out of his own mind; could it drive out his? If its ability to project were stronger, might not its receptivity mechanism be more vulnerable?
He stared at it and endeavoured to concentrate and focus all his thought upon it.
СDie,Т he thought. СYou are going to die. You are dying. You areЧТ
He tried variations on it, and mental pictures. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he found himself trembling with the intensity of the effort. But the Roller went ahead with its investigation of the bush, as utterly unaffected as though Carson had been reciting the multiplication table.
So that was no good.
He felt dizzy from the heat and his strenuous effort at concentration. He sat down on the blue sand and gave his full attention to studying the Roller. By study, perhaps, he could judge its strength and detect its weaknesses, learn things that would be valuable to know when and if they should come to grips.
It was breaking off twigs. Carson watched carefully, trying to judge just how hard it worked to do that. Later, he thought, he could find a similar bush on his own side, break off twigs of equal thickness himself, and gain a comparison of physical strength between his own arms and hands and those tentacles.
The twigs broke off hard; the Roller was having to struggle with each one. Each tentacle, he saw, bifurcated at the tip into two fingers, each tipped by a nail or claw. The claws didnТt seem to be particularly long or dangerous, or no more so than his own fingernails, if they were left to grow a bit.
No, on the whole, it didnТt look too hard to handle physically. Unless, of course, that bush was made of pretty tough stuff. Carson looked round; within reach was another bush of identically the same type.
He snapped off a twig. It was brittle, easy to break. Of course, the Roller might have been faking deliberately but he didnТt think so. On the other hand, where was it vulnerable? How would he go about killing it if he got the chance? He went back to studying it. The outer hide looked pretty tough; heТd need a sharp weapon of some sort. He picked up the piece of rock again. It was about twelve inches long, narrow, and fairly sharp on one end. If it chipped like flint, he could make a serviceable knife out of it.
The Roller was continuing its investigations of the bushes. It rolled
again, to the nearest one of another type. A little blue lizard, many-legged like the one Carson had seen on his side of the barrier, darted out from under the bush.
A tentacle of the Roller lashed out and caught it, picked it up. Another tentacle whipped over and began to pull legs off the lizard, as coldly as it had pulled twigs off the bush. The creature struggled frantically and emitted a shrill squealing that was the first sound Carson had heard here, other than the sound of his own voice.
Carson made himself continue to watch; anything he could learn about his opponent might prove valuable, even knowledge of its unnecessary cruelty Ч particularly, he thought with sudden emotion, knowledge of its unnecessary cruelty. It would make it a pleasure to kill the thing, if and when the chance came.
With half its legs gone, the lizard stopped squealing and lay limp in the RollerТs grasp.
It didnТt continue with the rest of the legs. Contemptuously it tossed the dead lizard away from it, in CarsonТs direction. The lizard arced through the air between them and landed at his feet.
It had come through the barrier! The barrier wasnТt there any more! Carson was on his feet in a flash, the knife gripped tightly in his hand, leaping forward. HeТd settle this thing here and now! With the barrier gone Ч but it wasnТt gone. He found that out the hard way, running head on into it and nearly knocking himself silly. He bounced back and fell.
As he sat up, shaking his head to clear it, he saw something coming through the air towards him, and threw himself flat again on the sand, to one side. He got his body out of the way, but there was a sudden sharp pain in the calf of his left leg.
He rolled backwards, ignoring the pain, and scrambled to his feet. It was a rock, he saw now, that had struck him. And the Roller was picking up another, swinging it back gripped between two tentacles, ready to throw again.
It sailed through the air towards him, but he was able to step out of its way. The Roller, apparently, could throw straight, but neither hard nor far. The first rock had struck him only because he had been sitting down and had not seen it coming until it was almost upon him.
Even as he stepped aside from that weak second throw Carson drew back his right arm and let fly with the rock that was still in his hand. If missiles, he thought with elation, can cross the barrier, then two can play at the game of throwing them.
He couldnТt miss a three-foot sphere at only four-yard range, and he didnТt miss. The rock whizzed straight, and with a speed several times that of the missiles the Roller had thrown. It hit dead centre, but hit flat instead of point first. But it hit with a resounding thump, and obviously hurt. The Roller had been reaching for another rock, but changed its
mind and got out of there instead. By the time Carson could pick up and throw another rock, the Roller was forty yards back from the barrier and going strong.
His second throw missed by feet, and his third throw was short. The Roller was out of range of any missile heavy enough to be damaging.
Carson grinned. That round had been his.
He stopped grinning as he bent over to examine the calf of his leg. A jagged edge of the stone had made a cut several inches long. It was bleeding pretty freely, but he didnТt think it had gone deep enough to hit an artery. If it stopped bleeding of its own accord, well and good. If not, he was in for trouble.
Finding out one thing, though, took precedence over that cut: the nature of the barrier.
He went forward to it again, this time groping with his hands before him. Holding one hand against it, he tossed a handful of sand at it with the other hand. The sand went right through; his hand didnТt.
Organic matter versus inorganic? No, because the dead lizard had gone through it, and a lizard, alive or dead, was certainly organic. Plant life? He broke off a twig and poked it at the barrier. The twig went through, with no resistance, but when his fingers gripping the twig came to the barrier, they were stopped.
He couldnТt get through it, nor could the Roller. But rocks and sand and a dead lizard.... How about a live lizard?
He went hunting under bushes until he found one, and caught it. He tossed it against the barrier and it bounced back and scurried away across the blue sand.
That gave him the answer, so far as he could determine it now. The screen was a barrier to living things. Dead or inorganic matter could cross it.
With that off his mind, Carson looked at his injured leg again. The bleeding was lessening, which meant he wouldnТt need to worry about~ making a tourniquet. But he should find some water, if any was available, to clean the wound.
Water Ч the thought of it made him realize that he was getting awfully thirsty. HeТd have to find water, in case this contest turned out to be a protracted one.
Limping slightly now, he started off to make a circuit of his half of the arena. Guiding himself with one hand along the barrier, he walked to his right until he came to the curving sidewall. It was visible, a dull blue-grey at close range, and the surface of it felt just like the central barrier.
He experimented by tossing a handful of sand at it, and the sand reached the wall and disappeared as it went through. The hemispherical shell was a force-field, too, but an opaque one, instead of transparent like the barrier.
He followed it round until he came back to the barrier, and walked back along the barrier to the point from which heТd started.
No sign of water. -
Worried now, he started a series of zigzags back and forth between the barrier and the wall, covering the intervening space thoroughly.