"Gordon R. Dickson - 8 Short Stories and Novellas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

very large ant with the front pair of legs developed into arms with six fingers
each and double-opposed thumbs. In addition, however, a large,
lobster-like claw was hinged just behind and above the waist. When
standing erect, as now, he measured about four feet from mandibles to the
point where his rear pair of legs rested on the ground, although the great
claw, fully extended, could have lifted something off a shelf a good foot or
more above Chuck's head тАУ and Chuck was over six feet in height.
Completely unadorned as he was, this Tomah weighed possibly ninety to a
hundred and ten Earth-pounds.
Chuck supplied him with a small throat-mike translator.
"Bright seasons," said the Tomah, as soon as this was adjusted. The
translator supplied him with a measured, if uninflected voice.
"Bright seasons," responded Chuck. "And welcome aboard, as we
humans say. Now, if you'll just come over here тАУ"
He went about the process of assisting the envoy into the bin across the
aisle from the Lugh, Binichi. The Tomah had completely ignored the other;
and all through the process of strapping in the envoy, Binichi neither stirred,
nor spoke.
"There you are," said Chuck, when he was finished, looking down at the
reclining form of the envoy. "Comfortable?"
"Pardon me," said the envoy. "Your throat-talker did not express itself."
"I said, comfortable?"
"You will excuse me," said the envoy. "You appear to be saying
something I don't understand."
"Are you suffering any pain, no matter how slight, from the harness and
bin I put you in?"
 "Thank you," said the envoy. "My health is perfect." He saluted Chuck
from the reclining position. Chuck saluted back and turned to his other
passenger. The similarity here was the throat-translator, that little miracle of
engineering, which the Lugh, in common with the envoy and Chuck, wore as
close as possible to his larynx.
"How about you?" said Chuck. "Still comfortable?"
"Like sleeping on a ground-swell," said Binichi. He grinned up at Chuck.
Or perhaps he did not grin тАУ like that of the dolphin he so much resembled,
the mouth of the Lugh had a built-in upward twist at the corners. He lay.
Extended at length in the bin he measured a few inches over five feet and
weighed most undoubtedly over two hundred pounds. His wide-spreading
tail was folded up like a fan into something resembling a club and his four
short limbs were tucked in close to the short snowy fur of his belly. "I would
like to see what the ocean looks like from high up."
"I can manage that for you," said Chuck. He went up front, unplugged one
of the extra screens and brought it back. "When you look into this," he said,
plugging it in above the bin, "it'll be like looking down through a hole in the
ship's bottom."
"I will feel upside down," said Binichi. "That should be something new,
too." He bubbled in his throat, an odd sound that the throat-box made no
attempt to translate. Human sociologists had tried to equate this Lugh noise
with laughter, but without much success. The difficulty lay in understanding
what might be funny and what might not, to a different race. "You've got my
opposite number tied down over there?"