"Murray Leinster - Exploration Team" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

space-boatтАЩs rocket through the fog of wings and bodies.
The rocket-flame grew steadily in size. Once, .apparently, it tilted to
adjust the boatтАЩs descending course. It went back to normal. A speck of
incandescence at first, it grew until it was like a great star, and then a
morethan-brilliant moon, and then it was a pitiless glaring eye. Huyghens
averted his gaze from it. Sitka Pete sat lumpilyтАФmore than a ton of himтАФ and
blinked wisely at the dark jungle away from the light. Sourdough ignored the
deepening, increasing rocket roar. He sniffed the air delicately. Faro Nell
held Nugget firmly under one huge paw and licked his head as if tidying him up
to be seen by company. Nugget wriggled.
The roar became that of ten thousand thunders. A warm breeze blew
outward from the landing-field. The rocket boat hurled downward, and its flame
touched the mist of flying things, and they shriveled and burned and were hot.
Then there were churning clouds of dust everywhere, and the center of the
field blazed terriblyтАФand something slid down a shaft of fire, and squeezed it
flat, and sat on itтАФand the flame went out. The rocket boat sat there, resting
on its tail fins, pointing toward the stars from which it came.
There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then, very faintly, the
noises of the night came again. There were sounds like those of organ pipes,
and very faint and apologetic noises like hiccups. All these sounds increased,
and suddenly Huyghens could hear quite normally. Then a sideport opened with a
quaint sort of clattering, and something unfolded from where it had been inset
into the hull of the space boat, and there was a metal passageway across the
flame-heated space on which the boat stood.
A man came out of the port. He reached back in and shook hands very
formally. He climbed down the ladder rungs to the walkway. He marched above
the steaming baked area, carrying a traveling bag. He reached the end of the
walk and stepped gingerly to the ground. He moved hastily to the edge of the
clearing. He waved to the space boat. There were ports. Perhaps someone
returned the gesture. The walkway folded briskly back up to the hull and
vanished in it. A flame exploded into being under the tail fins. There were
fresh clouds of monstrous, choking dust and a brightness like that of a sun.
There was noise past the possibility of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly
through the dust cloud, and sprang higher and climbed more swiftly still. When
HuyghensтАЩ ears again permitted him to hear anything, there was only a
diminishing mutter in the heavens and a small bright speck of light ascending
to the sky and swinging eastward as it rose to intercept the ship which had
let it descend.
The night noises of the jungle went on. Life on Loren Two did not
need to heed the doings of men. But there was a spot of incandescence in the
day-bright clearing, and a short, brisk man looked puzzledly about him with a
traveling bag in his hand.
Huyghens advanced toward him as the incandescence dimmed. Sourdough and
Sitka preceded him. Faro Nell trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal eye on
her offspring. The man in the clearing stared at the parade they made. It
would be upsetting, even after preparation, to land at night on a strange
planet, and to have the shipтАЩs boat and all links with the rest of the cosmos
depart, and then to find oneтАЩs self approachedтАФit might seem stalkedтАФby two
colossal male Kodiak bears, with a third bear and cub behind them. A single
human figure in such company might seem irrelevant.