"Philip Jose Farmer - The Book of Philip Jose Farmer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

opened its two parrot-like beaks, ran out a very long tubular tongue, withdrew the
tongue, and snapped the beak shut. Then it scuttled out from the hole to reveal a body
also shaped like a football and only three times as large as its head. The pinkish body
was supported three feet from the ground on ten spindly spidery legs, five on each
side. Its legs ended in broad round pads on which it ran across the jelly-mire surface,
sinking only slightly. Behind it streamed at least fifty others.
These picked up the little plants that Lane had upset in his struggles and licked
them clean with narrow round tongues that shot out at least two feet. They also
seemed to communicate by touching their tongues, as insects do with antennae.
As he was in the space between two rows, he was not involved in the setting
up of the dislodged plants. Several of them ran their tongues over his helmet, but
these were the only ones that paid him any attention. It was then that he began to stop
dreading that they might attack him with their powerful-looking beaks. Now he broke
into a sweat at the idea that they might ignore him completely.
That was just what they did. After gently embedding the thin roots of the
plantlets in the sticky stuff, they raced off toward the hole in the tube.
Lane, overwhelmed with despair, shouted after them, though he knew they
couldn't hear him through his helmet and the thin air even if they had hearing organs.
"Don't leave me here to die!"
Nevertheless, that was what they were doing. The last one leaped through the
hole, and the entrance stared at him like the round black eye of Death itself.
He struggled furiously to lift himself from the mire, not caring that he was
only exhausting himself.
Abruptly, he stopped fighting and stared at the hole.
A figure had crawled out of it, a figure in a pressure-suit.
Now he shouted with joy. Whether the figure was Martian or not, it was built
like a member of Homo sapiens. It could be presumed to be intelligent and therefore
curious.
He was not disappointed. The suited being stood up on two hemispheres of
shiny red metal and began walking toward him in a sliding fashion. Reaching him, it
handed him the end of a plastic rope it was carrying under its arm.
He almost dropped it. His rescuer's suit was transparent. It was enough of a
shock to see clearly the details of the creature's body, but the sight of the two heads
within the helmet caused him to turn pale.
The Martian slidewalked to the tube from which Lane had leaped. It jumped
lightly from the two bowls on which it had stood, landed on the three-foot high top of
the tube, and began hauling Lane out from the mess. He came out slowly but steadily
and soon was scooting forward, gripping the rope. When he reached the foot of the
tube, he was hauled on up until he could get his feet in the two bowls. It was easy to
jump from them to a place beside the biped.
It unstrapped two more bowls from its back, gave them to Lane, then lowered
itself on the two in the garden. Lane followed it across the mire.
Entering the hole, he found himself in a chamber so low he had to crouch.
Evidently, it had been constructed by the dekapeds and not by his companion for it,
too, had to bend its back and knees.
Lane was pushed to one side by some dekapeds. They picked up the thick
plug, made of the same gray stuff as the tube walls, and sealed the entrance with it.
Then they shot out of their mouths strand after strand of gray spiderwebby stuff to
seal the plug.
The biped motioned Lane to follow, and it slid down a tunnel which plunged