"Frank Herbert - Seed Stock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The colony ship had been constructed as a multiple tool, filled with select human stock, their domestic
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




animals and basic necessities, and it had been sent to plant humans in this far place. It had been designed
to land once, then be broken down into useful things.

Somehow, the basic necessities had fallen short, and the colony had been forced to improvise its own
tools. They had not really settled here yet, Kroudar realized. More than three years-and three years here
were five years of Mother Earth-and they still lived on the edge of extinction. They were trapped here.
Yes, that was true. The ship could never be reconstructed. And even if that miracle were accomplished,
the fuel did not exist. The colony washere.

And every member knew the predatory truth of their predicament: survival had not been assured. It was
known in subtle things to Kroudar's unlettered mind, especially in a fact he observed without being able
to explain.

Not one of their number had yet accepted a name for this planet. It was 'here' or 'this place.'

Or even more bitter terms.



Kroudar dumped his sack oftrodi onto a storage hut porch, mopped his forehead. The joints of his arms
and legs ached. His back ached. He could feel the sickness ofthis place in his bowels. Again, he wiped
perspiration from his forehead, removed the red cloth he wore to protect his head from that brutal sun.

Yellow hair fell down as he loosed the cloth, and he swung the hair back over his shoulders.

It would be dark very soon.

The red cloth was dirty, he saw. It would require another gentle washing. Kroudar thought it odd, this
cloth: grown and woven on Mother Earth, it would end its days onthis place.

Even as he and the others.

He stared at the cloth for a moment before placing ft carefully in a pocket.

All around him, his fishermen were going through the familiar ritual. Brown sacks woven of coarse native
roots were dumped dripping onto the storage hut porches. Some of his men leaned then against the
porch uprights, some sprawled in the sand.

Kroudar lifted his gaze. Fires behind the bluff above them sent smoke spirals into the darkening sky.
Kroudar was suddenly hungry. He thought of Technician Honida up there at the cookfire, their twin
sons-two years old next week-nearby at the door of the shipmetal long-house.

It stirred him to think of Honida. She had chosenhim. With men from the Scientist class and the