"The Soul Empty Ones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

"Is it the only clearing?"
She nodded again. "Why do you ask? Are you afraid the cart will land in it?"
Falon said nothing, but hastily untied the body from his horse. He carried it quickly to the flat rock where they had slept, and he placed the man-thing gently upon itЧwhere he would be in full view from the sky. The skycart crept into distant view as Falon hurried back into the brush. Ea was watching him with an anxious and bewildered stare.
"They'll see him!" she gasped.
"I hope they do! Hurry! Let's go to the clearing!"
He caught her arm, and the began racing along the shallow creekbed, their sandals splashing in the narrow trickle of shallow water. For a few seconds they ducked beneath overhanging brush, but soon the brush receded, and the bed broadened out into a flat expanse of dry rock, broken only by the wear marks of high waters. Then they were in the open, running along the brushline.
"In here!" he barked, and plunged over a root-tangled embankment and into a dense thicket. She followed, and they crouched quietly in the thick foliage, as the purr of the skycart became a nearby drone.
"What are we going to do?" Ea asked tensely.
"Wait, and hope. Perhaps you'll get your knife wet."

Falon peered up through the leaves, and saw the skycart briefly as it moved past. But the sound of its engine took on a new note, and soon he knew that it was hovering over the rock where the body lay. Ea made a small sound of fright in her throat.
After a moment, the skycart moved over the clearing and hung growling fifty feet above them. As it began to settle, Falon saw a fur-coated face peering out from its cabin. He hissed at Ea to re-main silent.
The skycart dropped slowly into the clearing, rolled a short distance, and stopped, a pebble's toss from the hidden tribesmen. Its occupants remained inside for a moment, peering about the perimeter of brush. Then a hatch opened, and one of the feeble creatures climbed painfully out. There were three of them, and Falon shuddered as he saw the evil snouts of their flamethrowers.
One of them remained to guard the ship, while the others began moving slowly up the creekbed, their weapons at the ready, and their eyes searching the brush with suspicion. They spoke in low voices, but Falon noticed that they did not use the ancient sacred tongue of Man. He frowned in puzzlement. The valley folk who had been close enough to hear their speech swore that they used the holy language.
"Now?" whispered the girl.
Falon shook his head. "Wait until they find the horses," he hissed in her ear.
The spider-legged creatures moved feebly, as if they were carrying heavy weights; and they were a long time covering the distance to the flat rock. The guard was sitting in the hatchway with his flame gun across his lap. His huge eyes blinked painfully in the harsh morning sunlight as he watched the thickets about the clearing. But he soon became incautious, and directed his stare in the direction his companions had gone.
Falon heard a whinny from the horses, then a shrill shout from the invaders. The guard stood up. Startled, he moved a few steps up the creekbed, absorbed in the shouts of his companions. Falon drew his war knife, and weighed the distance carefully. A miss would mean death. Ea saw what he meant to do, and she slipped her own knife to him.
Falon stood up, his shoulders bursting through the foliage. He aimed calmly, riveting his attention on an accurate throw, and ignoring the fact that the guard had seen him and was lifting his weapon to fire. The knife left Falon's hand as casually as if he had been tossing it at a bit of fur tacked to a door.
The flame gun belched, but the blast washed across the creek- i bed, and splashed upward to set the brush afire. The guard screamed and toppled. The intense reflected heat singed Falon's
hair, and made his stiff face shriek with pain. He burst from the flaming brush, tugging the girl after him.
The guard was sitting on the rocks and bending over his abdomen. The gun had clattered to the ground. The creature had tugged the knife from his belly, and he clutched it foolishly as he shrieked gibberish at it. The others had heard him and were hurrying back from the horses.
Falon seized the gun and kicked the guard in the head. The creature crumpled with a crushed skull. The gads die easily, he thought, as he raced along the brushline, keeping out of view.

He fumbled with the gun, trying to discover its firing principle. He touched a stud, then howled as a jet of flame flared the brush on his left. He retreated from the flames, then aimed at the growth that overhung the narrowing creek toward the h,orses. A stream of incendiary set an inferno among the branches, sealing off the invaders from their ship.
"Into the skycart!" he barked at Ea.
She sprinted toward it, then stopped at the hatch, peering inside. "How will you make the god-machine fly?" she asked.
He came to stare over her shoulder, then cursed softly. Evidently the skycart had no mind of its own, for the cabin was full of things to push and things to pull. The complexity bewildered him. He stood thoughtfully staring at them.
"They'll creep around the fire in a few moments," warned Ea.
Falon pushed her into the ship, then turned to shout toward the spreading blaze. "We have your skycart! If we destroy it, you will be left to the wild dogs!"
"The wild dogs won't attack the sons of men!" Ea hissed.
He glanced at her coolly. If she were right, they were lost. But no sound came from beyond the fire. But the invaders had had time to move around it through the brush, while the man and the girl presented perfect targets in the center of the clearing.
"Fire your god-weapons," Falon jeered. "And destroy your skycart." He spoke the ancient holy tongue, but now he wondered if the invaders could really understand it.
They seemed to be holding a conference somewhere in the brush. Suddenly Falon heard the horses neighing shrilly above the crackling of the fire. There came a sound of trampling in the dry tangles, then a scream. A flame gun belched, and the horses shrieked briefly.
"One of them was trampled," Falon gasped. "Man's pets no longer know his odor."
He listened for more sounds from the horses, but none came. "They've killed our mounts," he growled, then shouted again.
"Don't the pets know their masters? Hurry back, you gods, or perhaps the skycart will also forget."
A shrill and frightened voice answered him. "You can't escape, android! You can't fly the copter."
"And neither can you, if we destroy it!"
There was a short silence, then: "What do you want, android?" "You will come into the clearing unarmed."
The invader responded with a defiant curse. Falon turned the flame gun diagonally upward and fired a hissing streak to the lee-ward. It arced high, then spat into the brush two hundred paces from the clearing. Flames burst upward. He set seven similar fires at even intervals about them.
"Soon they will burn together in a ring," he shouted. "Then they will burn inward and drive you to us. You have four choices: flee to the forest; or wait for the fire to drive you to us; or destroy your ship by killing us; or surrender now. If you surrender, we'll let you live. If you choose otherwise, you die."
"And you also, android!"
Falon said nothing. He stayed in the hatchway, keeping an eye on the brush for signs of movement. The fires were spreading rap-idly. After a few minutes, the clearing would become a roasting oven.
"Don't fire, android!" called the invader at last.
"Then stand up! Hold your weapon above your head."
The creature appeared fifty paces up the slope and moved slowly toward them. Falon kept his flame gun ready.
"Where's the other?" he called.
"Your beasts crushed him with their hoofs."
Falon covered him silently until he tore his way into the clearing. "Take his weapon, Ea," he murmured. The girl obeyed, but her hand twitched longingly toward her knife as she approached. The creature's eyes widened and he backed away from her.