"Dragon Army" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

wearing his animate chains.
Newell ate a hearty meal but, naturally enough, Bulkley had no appetite. His
throat was sore from the experience of the night, and his voice was hoarse as he
pleaded, "Take these things off Me, Newell, and I swear I won't try to kill you,
again."
Newell laughed without amusement. "Let's not talk nonsense," he said
contemptuously. "They're my guarantee against murder." He added, with an air of
assurance that Bulkley could not know was false, "Kill me, and you'll never get
out. You'll rot with those things around your neck. Now, I'd like to see that
radio transmitter."
As he had expected, it was in the ruins of the old space ship. Even handicapped
as Bulkley was by the brown plant arms around his neck, it took the man only a
few minutes to fit the parts together.
Newell stared at the array of tubes and transistors, at the elute-powered
electric generator. "Power plant too weak for twenty-four-hour operation, but
strong enough to get through to the nearest space station in bursts. Very good.
You're not a bad engineer, Bulkley. A little untrustworthy, with homicidal
tendencies, but highly skilled."
The man said nothing. But he thought, and the nature of his thoughts was
obvious.
Newell hesitated. It seemed foolish to go ahead with keeping a promise to a man
who had tried to kill him, but Newell had always kept his word before, and he
did not intend to break it now. "All right, Bulkley," he said at last. "Now I'm
going to keep my part of the bargain. Come with me."
Newell led the way to the prairie-like field where he had been working. From the
corner of his eye he kept a watch on the other man, as if he didn't quite count
on the deadly plants to keep Bulkley up to the proper behavior. He knew, as he
didn't want Bulkley to know, that the plants had only a short life, and then in
the normal course of events it would be only a day or two more before the man
was free of them.
The field was bare and looked recently plowed. The normal plant life had been
killed off, and the half-acre of brownish-black soil had a stark and naked
appearance.
Newell stretched out a hand filled with curious objects. "Take a look at these.
What do you think they are?"
Bulkley caught his breath in surprise. "Teeth! Big, pointed brown and white
teeth! There are animals on this planet after all!"
He stared around him in an obvious access of terror. The planet had been bad
enough before, with its great falls of trees and its earthquakes. Now it seemed
to be acquiring new and equally horrible dangers.
But Newell said reassuringly, "There are no animals. Now, get back and watch."
Newell had a plastic bag full of the brown tooth-like objects, and he slung the
bag over his shoulder before he walked through the plowed area. As he strode
between the furrows, scattering the seed sparsely to right and left, and
reaching into the plastic bag from time to time for another handful, he looked
like one of the ancient pre-historic farmers back on the mother planet.

FEAR GAVE Way to confusion in Bulkley's baffled face. "What do you expect to
grow?"
Newell didn't answer. He glanced once at the rapidly rising sun, pink and hot,