"Garrett, Randall - The Hunting Lodge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garrett Randall)

It wasn't more than ten minutes before I heard the buzzing behind me. Something was coming over the road at a good clip, but without headlights. In the darkness, I couldn't see a thing, but I knew it wasn't an ordinary car. Not coming from the Lodge.
I ran for the nearest tree, a big monster at least three feet thick and fifty or sixty feet high. The lowest branch was a heavy one about seven feet from the ground. I grabbed it and swung myself up and kept on climbing until I was a good twenty feet off the ground. Then I waited.
The whine stopped down the road about half a mile, about where I'd left the Ford-Studebaker. Whatever it was prowled around for a minute or two, then started coming on down the road.
When it finally came close enough for me to see it in the moonlight, I recognized it for what it was. A patrol robot. It was looking for me.
Then I heard another whine. But this one was different; it was a siren coming from the main highway.
Overhead, I heard a flitter whistling through the sky. The police.
The patrol robot buzzed around on its six wheels, turning its search-turret this way and that, trying to spot me.
The siren grew louder, and I saw the headlights in the distance. In less than a minute, the lights struck the patrol robot, outlining every detail of the squat, ugly silhouette. It stopped, swiveling its turret toward the police car. The warning light on the turret came on, glowing a bright red.
The cops slowed down and stopped. One of the men in the car called out, "Senator? Are you on the other end of that thing?"
No answer from the robot.
"I guess he's really dead," said another officer in a low, awed voice.
"It don't seem possible," the first voice said. Then he called again to the patrol robot. "We're police officers. Will you permit us to show our identification?"
The patrol robot clicked a little as the information was relayed back to the Lodge and the answer given. The red warning light turned green, indicating that the guns were not going to fire.
About that time, I decided that my only chance was to move around so that the trunk of the tree was between me and the road. I had to move slowly so they wouldn't hear me, but I finally made it.
I could hear the policeman saying, "According to the information we received, Senator Rowley was shot by his secretary, Edgar Gifford. This patrol job must be hunting him."
"Hey!" said another voice. "Here comes another one! He must be in the area somewhere!"
I could hear the whining of a second patrol robot approaching from the Lodge. It was still about a mile away, judging from the sound.
I couldn't see what happened next, but I could hear the first robot moving, and it must have found me, even though I was out of sight. Directional heat detector, probably.
"In the tree, eh?" said a cop.
Another called: "All right, Gifford! Come on down!"
Well, that was it. I was caught. But I wasn't going to be taken alive. I eased out the sleeve gun and sneaked a peek around the tree. No use killing a cop, I thought, he's just doing his job.
So I fired at the car, which didn't hurt a thing.
"Look out!"
"Duck!"
"Get that blaster going!"
Good. It was going to be a blaster. It would take off the treetop and me with it. I'd die quickly.
There was a sudden flurry of shots, and then silence.
I took another quick peek and got the shock of my life.
The four police officers were crumpled on the ground, shot down by the patrol robot from the Lodge. One of themЧthe one holding the blasterЧwasn't quite dead yet. He gasped something obscene and fired the weapon just as two more slugs from the robot's turret hit him in the chest.
The turret exploded in a gout of fire.
I didn't get it, but I didn't have time to wonder what was going on. I know a chance when I see one. I swung from the branch I was on and dropped to the ground, rolling over in a bed of old leaves to take up the shock. Then I made a beeline for the police car.

On the way, I grabbed one of the helmets from a uniformed corpse, hoping that my own tunic was close enough to the same shade of scarlet to get me by. I climbed in and got the machine turned around just as the second patrol robot came into sight. It fired a couple of shots after me, but those patrol jobs don't have enough armament to shoot down a police car; they're strictly for hunting unarmed and unprotected pedestrians.
Behind me there were a couple of flares in the sky that reminded me of my own exploding flitter, but I didn't worry about what they could be.
I was still puzzled about the robot's shooting down the police. It didn't make sense.
Oh, well, it had saved my neck, and I wasn't going to pinch a gift melon.
The police car I was in had evidently been the only ground vehicle dispatched toward the LodgeЧpossibly because it happened to be nearby. It was a traffic-control car; the regular homicide squad was probably using Hitters.
I turned off the private road and onto the highway, easing into the traffic-control pattern and letting the car drift along with the other vehicles. But I didn't shove it into automatic. I didn't like robots just then. Besides, if I let the main control panels take over the guiding of the car, someone at headquarters might wonder why car such-and-such wasn't at the Lodge as ordered; they might wonder why it was going down the highway so unconcernedly.
There was only one drawback. I wasn't used to handling a car at a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles an hour. If something should happen to the traffic pattern, I'd have to depend on my own reflexes. And they might not be fast enough.
I decided I'd have to ditch the police car as soon as I could. It was too much trouble and too easy to spot.
I had an idea. I turned off the highway again at the next break, a few miles farther on. There wasn't much side traffic at that time of night, so I had to wait several minutes before the pattern broke again and a private car pulled out and headed down the side road.
I hit the siren and pulled him over to the side.
He was an average-sized character with a belligerent attitude and a fat face.
"What's the matter, officer? There was nothing wrong with that break. I didn't cut out of the pattern on manual, you know. I wasЧ" He stopped when he realized that my tunic was not that of a policeman. "Why, you're notЧ"
By then, I'd already cut him down with a stun gun I'd found in the arms compartment of the police car. I hauled him out and changed tunics with him. His was a little loose, but not so much that it would be noticeable. Then I put the helmet on his head and strapped him into the front seat of the police vehicle with the safety belt.
After being hit with a stun gun, he'd be out for a good hour. That would be plenty of time as far as I was concerned.
I transferred as much of the police armory as I thought I'd need into the fat-faced fellow's machine and then I climbed into the police car with him. I pulled the car around and headed back toward the highway.
Just before we reached the control area, I set the instruments for the Coast and headed him west, back the way I had come.
I jumped out and slammed the door behind me as the automatic controls took over and put him in the traffic pattern.