"The Fittest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

They walked back up the long corridors to the outside and the ship. "Just like brown bears," Terry said warmly. "I always liked those brown bears that mooch candy bars and popcorn in the parks. I'd like to take some of these back and introduce them around to the guys."

"Oxygen would be death to them," warned Gottlieb. "They will need technology and space suits. Their science is backward because of the rock, not because of too little thinking. What use is thinking without fire, wood, or hard metal? What can intelligence do with nothing to work with but rock? One needs tools!"

"Let's take them some," said Terry. "This is one native minority in history that is going to get a fair break."

The first trip, they took with them a double armload of empty plastic food cans for the natives to use as water containers. Then Gottlieb stayed behind to watch their use and learn a few words of their language, his face beaming and excited behind his faceplate. Terry returned on the second trip with Gottlieb's tool kit and some plastic wall plates from the storeroom bulkhead. "It's cooling," he reported. "Pretty soon we can start."

The leader native began to understand vaguely that the blowtorch was some sort of a tool. He touched and lifted the oddly shaped, beautifully worked object which was so strangely not stone, and not dust, and not gold, and he hooted at it supersonically to see it better, then looked up skeptically at the Earthmen. It could not be a tool. It was not a wedge, and not a hammer, but he hoped with great yearning that it would be a tool.

Amused, Terry watched his play of expressions. "LetТs show him," he suggested.

They decided to build a cistern, with piped water.

Water dripped with tinkles and splashes into the carefully built inadequate rock of the natives storage pool. Before turning the blowtorch on, Gottlieb warned the natives away with a gesture. "Different metabolismЧheat radiation might be very dangerous to them."

The cluster of small brown bears felt his anxiety and obediently trotted off up the corridor to a safe distance, while the two Earthmen set to work in their heavy space suits to build an airtight cistern.

When they had finished the natives came and looked, and then as if by pre-arrangement drew off up the corridor again, leaving two behind.

One of the two who was left tugged at the blowtorch in Gottlieb's hand, looking up earnestly at his face.

"He wants me to show him how to use it," Gottlieb said, still worried.

"Go ahead," Terry said, amused. "He knows what he's doing."

The volunteer's motions seemed unsteady, but he mimicked Gottlieb's demonstration efficiently enough. The engineer handed him the blowtorch and showed him how to turn it on. The other native stood to one side making a steady supersonic note, and watching.

The volunteer turned on the blowtorch without clumsiness, started faintly as the thin blue flame tongued out, skillfully smoothed the rough unfinished plastic corner for three minutes while they watched, then died and fell into the storage pool.

The blowtorch clanged down and flared on the floor, and Gottlieb reached it and turned it off before it did any more damage.

The group of friendly sober little bears came forward again. First there was the next-most-expendable, who had stood close to the experiment and beeped to give a side lighting of sound to what happened and measure the range of the deadly effect by being close. Then there came the main group which had stood around the bend of a corridor and watched by the distorted reflection of sound, and last there was the leader who had gone some distance away up a side corridor, out of reach of any possible danger. The logical pattern of the arrangement was clear.

It was rather horrible to Terry, for he understood how ready they had been.

They were thumping the chest of the one who had stood close, and gabbling questions at him. Gottlieb and Terry drew together watching silently.

"Why do they have to be so damned cheerful about it?' Terry demanded.

Gottlieb was calm. "It is a good death, dying for the future. They must have hoped they could use the blowtorch. They know they need tools. He would not have had such a chance usually.Ф

"A chance to be killed, you mean?" Terry asked sarcastically, watching as two teddy bears picked the body up from the shallow water of the storage pool and casually carted it away. There was no doubt that he was dead. Even the two Earthmen had felt the flash of pain that preceded the dark. "Fine chance!"

"A chance to be useful," Gottlieb protested, hurt. "He was weak. Probably he was sick and that was why they chose him."

"Chose him!" Terry felt sick. The whole business began strangely to seem like an extension of his argument with Gottlieb, with the teddy bears unfairly taking Gottlieb's side. He stepped forward and gripped the shoulder of the leader, and turned him around, speaking directly at the large intelligent eyes.

"You're a sort of adviser to this bunch. Do you mean to say that you chose two who were sick to be killed, while you went and hid yourselves?'