"Gordon R. Dickson - Danger-Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

DANGER тАУ HUMAN
By Gordon R. Dickson


DANGER -- HUMAN, Astounding December 1957, (c) 1957 by Street &
Smith Publications, Inc.




The spaceboat came down in the silence of perfect working
Order--down through the cool, dark night of a New Hampshire lute
spring. There was hardly any moon and the path emerging from the clump
of conifers and snaking its way across the dim pasture looked like a long
strip of pale cloth, carelessly dropped and forgotten there.
The two aliens checked the boat and stopped it, hovering, some fifty feet
above the pasture, and all but invisible against the low-lying clouds. Then
they set themselves to wait, their Woolly, bearlike forms settled on
haunches, their uniform belts glinting a little in the shielded light from the
instrument panel, talking now and then in desultory murmurs.
"It's not a bad place," said the one of junior rank, looking down at the
earth below.
"Why should it be?" answered the senior.
The junior did not answer. He shifted on his haunches.
"The babies are due soon," he said. "I just got a message."
"How many?" asked the senior.
"Three--the doctor thinks. That's not bad for a first birthing."
"My wife only had two."
 "I know. You told me."
They fell silent for a few seconds. The spaceboat rocked almost
imperceptibly in the waters of night.
"Look--" said the junior, suddenly. "Here it comes, right on schedule."
The senior glanced overside. Down below, a tall, dark form had emerged
from the trees and was coming out along the path. A little beam of light
shone before him, terminating in a blob of illumination that danced along
the path ahead, lighting his way. The senior stiffened.
"Take controls," he said. The casualness had gone out of his voice. It
had become crisp, impersonal.
"Controls," answered the other, in the same emotionless voice.
"Take her down."
"Down it is."
The spaceboat dropped groundward. There was an odd sort of
soundless, lightless explosion--it was as if concussive wave had passed,
robbed of all effects but one. The figure dropped, the light rolling from its
grasp and losing its glow in a tangle of short grass. The spaceboat landed
and the two aliens got out.
In the dark night they loomed furrily above the still figure. It was that of
a lean, dark man in his early thirties, dressed in clean, much-washed
corduroy pants and checkered wool lumberjack shirt. He was unconscious,
but breathing slowly, deeply and easily.