"Philip Jose Farmer - The Empire of the Nine omnibus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

swift enough, and the grenade exploded in his hand. The covering of flesh was
enough to soften its effect. He was killed and I suppose everybody else in the
chopper was, too. But the fuel did not catch fire, not immediately, anyway. The
chopper tilted and slid at a forty-five degree angle away from me and into a tree
trunk about ten feet above the ground. By then I was running, and when I saw a
gully, I dived into it. I was flying through the air when the fuel and napalm did go
off, and I felt the heat pass over the gully. My bare back was almost seared.

My face was turned away, and I was breathing shallowly, because I did not want
to sear my lungs. Then I was up and out, because if the first blast had not gotten
me, I had a chance to get away.

The heat felt as if it were scorching the hairs off my legs and the back of my
head, and smoke curled around me. But the explosion had taken place about a
hundred and fifty yards away, and the heavy bush helped screen me. The
napalm bombs were not large ones.

The other copter had hung back for some reason or other. Perhaps it was
attached to the men with the dogs and was to play a part if the dogs treed me.
But when the first chopper exploded, the second came up swiftly enough. It,
however, stayed about three hundred feet up as its crew observed the wreck.
They had no idea whether the copter had crashed accidentally or whether I had
brought it down with my firearm.

I remained under the thick elephant's-ear plant. An observer in the air can see
much more than one on the ground in these conditions. Heavy as the bush was,
it still had open spaces across which I had to cross, however briefly, and once I
was seen I had little chance to get away.

The chopper did not hover long over the wreck. It began to swing in a wide circle
around, apparently hoping to flush me out or catch sight of me. Then it went back
west, and I left my hiding place and travelled swiftly eastward. Just before I
reached the bottom of the first cliff, I had to conceal myself again. The chopper
was returning. It went by about a hundred feet above me and two hundred yards
to the north. It contained a number of men and dogs.

I could not see it, but I guessed that it had settled down on the edge of the cliff
and that dogs and men were getting out of it. Their plans now were to push me
east with one party and hope to catch me with the one now ahead. Then I was
able to see the faces of some men as they watched from the lip of the" cliff. The
copter took off. again and began circling around. Occasionally, the machine guns
in it spat fire. I could not hear the guns' above the roar of the copter, but some of
the bullets struck close enough for me to hear their impact against the trees.
They were probing in the hope they could scare me out.

If I stayed where I was, the dogs of the party behind me might pick up my scent.
Their baying and barking was getting closer. It was difficult to determine in that
muffling foliage, but it seemed that they were headed straight toward me.

I was beginning to feel that I had gone through enough for one day. To survive a