"Lester Del Rey - The Wings of Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

the sound a meteor would logically make. He stared harder, wondering, and saw that it was settling
downward slowly, not in a sudden rush, and that the flare struck down instead of fading out behind. That
meant-could only mean-intelligent control. A rocket!
Lhin's mind spun under the shock, and crazy ideas of his ancestors' return, of another unknown
refuge, of the Great Ones' personal visit slid into his thoughts. Basically, though, he was severely logical,
and one by one he rejected them. This machine could not come from the barren moon, and that left only
the fabled planet lying under the bottom of his world, or those that wandered around the sun in other
orbits. Intelligence there?
His mind slid over the records he had read, made when his ancestors had crossed space to those
worlds, long before the refuge was built. They had been unable to colonize, due to the oppressive pull of
gravity, but they had observed in detail. On the second planet were only squamous things that slid
through the water and curious fronds on the little dry land; on his own primary, gigantic beasts covered
the globe, along with growth rooted to the ground. No intelligence on those worlds. The fourth, though,
was peopled by more familiar life, and like his own evolutionary forerunners, there was no division into
animal and vegetable, but both were present in all. Ball-shaped blobs of life had already formed into
packs, guided by instinct, with no means of communication. Yet, of the other worlds known, that seemed
the most probable as a source of intelligence. If, by some miracle, they came from the third, he
abandoned hope; the blood lust of that world was too plainly written in the records, where living
mountain-like beasts tore at others through all the rolls of etched pictures. Half filled with dread, half with
anticipation, he heard the ship land somewhere near, and started toward it, his tail curved tightly behind
him.
He knew, as he caught sight of the two creatures outside the opened lock of the vessel that his guess
had been wrong. The creatures were bifurcate, like himself, though massive and much larger, and that
meant the third world. He hesitated, watching carefully as they stared about, apparently keenly enjoying
the air around them. Then one spoke to the other, and his mind shook under a new shock.
The articulation and intonation were intelligent, but the sounds were a meaningless babble.
SpeechтАФthat! It must be, though the words held no meaning. WaitтАФin the old records. Slha the
Freethinker had touched on some such thought; he had written of remote days when the Lunarites had
had no speech and postulated that they had invented the sounds and given them arbitrary meaning, and
that only by slow ages of use had they become instinctive in the new-grown infantsтАФhad even dared to
question that the Great Ones had ordered speech and sound meanings as the inevitable complement of
intelligence. And now, it seemed, he was right. Lhin groped up through the fog of his discovery and
tightened his thoughts into a beam.
Again, shock struck at him. Their minds were hard to reach, and once he did find the key and grope
forward into their thoughts, it was apparent that they could not read his! Yet they were intelligent. But the
one on whom his thoughts centered noticed him finally, and grabbed at the other. The words were still
harsh and senseless, but the general meaning reached the moon man. "Fats, what's that?"
The other turned and stared at Lhin's approach. "Search me. Looks like a scrawny three-foot
monkey. Reckon it's harmless?"
"Probably, maybe even intelligent. It's a cinch no band of political refugees built this
placeтАФnonhuman construction. Hi there!" The one who thought of himself as SlimтАФmassive though he
appearedтАФturned to the approaching Lunarite. "What and who are you?"
"Lhin," he answered, noting surprised pleasure in Slim's mind. "LhinтАФme are Lhin."
Fats grunted. "Guess you're right, Slim. Seems to savvy you. Wonder who came here and taught him
English."
Lhin fumbled clumsily, trying to pin down the individual sounds to then' meanings and remember
them. "No sahffy Enlhis. No who came here. YouтАФ" He ran out of words and drew nearer, making
motions toward Slim's head, then his own. Surprisingly, Slim got it.
"He means he knows what we're thinking, I guess. Telepathy."
"Yeah? Marshies claim they can do it among themselves, but I never saw one read a human mind.