"Alan Dean Foster - With friends like these." - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Yop invisibility screens were known to be good, but this good?... His speculations were
interrupted by what happened next.
The nearest Yop reached down and lifted the Rip in one massive, knobby claw. It held it like that,
steady, while it examined the youngster along with its partner. The boy, in turn, appeared to be
examining them with its wide, deep-gray eyes. Both were making the motions and gestures which
Phrnnx knew indicated Yop laughter.
What followed occurred so rapidly that Phmnx, afterward, had difficulty in reconstructing the
incident.
The Yop raised the youngster over its horned head and swung it toward the ground with every
intention of smashing the child's brains out. But the boy abruptly slowed in midair, turned, and
landed gently on its feet. The Yop was staring at its now empty hand in surprise. The expression
of placid innocence, which had heretofore been the child's sole visage, shifted all at once into a
strong frown that was somehow more terrifying than any contortion of rage could have been. It
said, in a very unchildlike tone of voice, two words:
"Bad mans!"
And gestured with the twig.
The two Yops glowed briefly an intolerable silver-white, shading to blue. It was the color of
novaтАФa chrome nova. The two scouts "popped" loudly, once, and disappeared. In their places two
clouds of fine gray ash sifted slowly to the ground. The boy pointed his stick at the multiton Yop
warship. "More bad mans," he said. The ship abruptly glowed with the same intolerable radiance. It
"popped" with a considerably louder and much more satisfying bang. The boy then turned and went
over to the brook. He began slowly stirring the water with his stick.
Phrnnx found he could breathe again. The feathers on his 'back, however, did not lie down. All
that remained of the invincible Yop battlewagon was the faint smell of ozone and a very large pile
of fine multicolored ash. This was patiently being removed by a small breeze.
The boy suddenly looked up, turned, and stared straight at where Phrnnx was crouching behind the
bole of a large pine. He started to stroll over.
Phrnnx ran. He ran hard, fast, and unthinkingly. He was not sure what a "bad mans" was, but he had
no wish to be included in that categoryтАФnone whatsoever. No sirree. He ran in a blind panic with
all four legs and a great sorrow that his ancestors had traded their wings for intelligence.
Ahead, a dark, cavelike depression appeared in the ground. Without breaking stride, he
instinctively threw himself into the protective opening.
And into the closet of the world.
Phrnnx awoke with the equivalent of a throbbing headache. He almost panicked again when he
remembered that last moment before blacking out. A touch of the hard, unresisting metal underneath
reassured and calmed him. He had thrown himself in a caveтАФ only it hadn't been a cave. It had been
a hole. A hole filled with machinery. Yes, that's right! He remembered falling past
machineryтАФlevels and levels and levels of it. He did not know it, but he had fallen only a mile
before the first of the automatic safety devices had analyzed his alien body chemistry, pronounced
him organic, alive, and reasonably worth saving, and brought him to a comfortable resting place at
the fifty-third level.
He staggered to his feet, becoming aware of a faint susurration around him. Warm air, and the
faint sounds of the almost silent machines. A slow look around confirmed the evidence of his other
senses... and he almost wished it hadn't. Machines. Machine upon machine. Massive and unnoticing,
they throbbed with life and power all around him. He could not see the end of the broad aisle he
stood on. He turned and staggered over to the edge of the shaft he had obviously fallen into,
following the current of fresh air.
A quick look over the side made him draw back involuntarily. His race was not subject to vertigo,
but there are situations and occasions where the reality transcends the experience. There is too
much relativity in a cavern, even an artificial one.