"Larry Niven - Footfall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Mvubi, Zulu warrior
Niklaus Van Der Stel, Afrikaner Commando

Juana Trujillo Morgan, wife of Major Morgan
Lieutenant Colonel Joe Halverson
Major David Morgan, Kansas National Guard
Captain Evan
Corporal Jimmy Lewis
Captain George Mason



PROLOGUE


Where are they?
-Enrico Fermi

The Fifth Part of the Year Three

Within its broad array of nested rings, the planet was a seething storm. It had always been so. Patterns chased themselves across its brown-on-brown face in bands and curlicues. The space around it churned with activity: billions of icy particles in a broad array of nested rings; eights of moons; streamers of dust whipped by powerful magnetic fields; all whirling around at terrific velocities, at several makasrupkithp per breath. Message Bearer maneuvered within that storm.
The Herdmaster's Advisor, gazing raptly through the thick double window, seemed to notice only the beauty of the scene.
The Herdmaster found that irritating. His own domain included collisions, industrial operations, internal quarrels, and the peaceful integration of sleepers with spaceborn. He had quite enough problems without . . . that.
Message Bearer's main telescope was the equal of any astronomical installation on the world they had left behind. The alien probe was close now, by astronomical standards, and the screen showed it in fine detail.
A circular antenna. A pod at the tip of a long boom radiated infrared warmth. That would be the power supply. Two more booms thrust instruments outward. Clasp digits with me, that I may know your herd! One extension held what had to be cameras, the other some kind of electronic sensing device.
Sixty-four sleepers, the Breaker's team, were working now to infer what they could about the creatures who had built that machine. They hadn't told the Herdmaster anything useful. When the camera platform began to turn, the Herdmaster's digits flexed restlessly.
"You made your decision half a year ago," Advisor Fathistehtulk said placidly. "You did not destroy it then. How can you destroy it now?"
"Here is where their fragile spy probe must pass through endless orbiting debris, It must survive collisions, radiation, orbital fluctuations, and any unreal danger the prey may imagine. Here is where some mischance is most likely to smash it!"
"We agreed that the probe will find no trace of us. Message Bearer is tiny on this scale. Surely the probe is not seeking us: it was launched long before we arrived. But if there were something to see, yonder camera might have seen it by now. Some evidence of our presence, vivid in their receivers ... and now comes a flash of light, then silence from the probe, ever after. Would that tickle your suspicions?"
"If you were Herdmaster, would you continue to worry?"
That was cruel. At the beginning of things, Fathisteh-tulk had been Herdmaster. He had entered his death-sleep expecting to be Herdmaster again. In his present subservient position the concerns of a Herdmaster seemed not to bother him at all. Sometimes Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph wondered if he was being mocked.
"Were I Herdmaster," the Advisor said placidly, "I would do as you have done. Rest quiet while the probe passes through. Make no attempt to move the ship, send no message to our work force on the Foot. Let the probe pass. When the second probe comes, we will be established on the Foot. Let them try to distinguish us against an unknown background."
And he turned from the telescope screen, perhaps pointedly, to gaze on the great brown-patterned world and its vast rings.
The Herdmaster said, "I worry. For much of their history the prey must have studied this ... great gaudy ornament in their sky. They would know what to expect better than we do after less than a year. What have we missed?"
Outside the broad main ring system, a narrower ring still roiled from the wake of Message Bearer's drive.


November 1980

As she closed the gate and automatically picked up a scrap of paper that had blown into the yard, Linda Gillespie realized that she was beginning to think of this house -- a typical California development split-level -- as home. That would mike the second home since she was married. There had been three other places they hadn't stayed in long enough to think about as homelike at all. Five moves in four years. The Air Force was a mobile service, especially for hot fighter pilots. The best place had been in Texas, when Edmund had been with the astronaut office, and they'd lived in El Lago.
But this couldn't really be home. It was just a rented house, a place to stay during Edmund's tour at the Space and Missiles Systems Organization in Los
Angeles. Now that he'd been assigned as a shuttle pilot, they'd move again. Back to Houston! That would be nice. Houston treated astronauts and their families very well indeed.
It was a gloomy Los Angeles November morning, chilly even through her cashmere sweater, with low clouds and fog. The air smelled damp, with a trace of the odor of smog. There was no sunshine, although by noon there would be. It wasn't pleasant outside.
Inside was better. She poured coffee and sat at the kitchen table. Too early for Ed to call. He wouldn't anyway. He never did when he was out of town. It's all very well to be married to an astronaut hero, but it would be nice to have a husband at home once in a while. The Los Angeles Times lay on the table, and she thumbed through it.
She didn't like to be alone at home, but she didn't want to go anywhere, either. Ed could assure her she was perfectly safe, much safer than in
Washington, where she'd grown up, and she could believe him -- but she knew
Washington, and Los Angeles was a mystery. One San Francisco columnist kept teasing Los Angeles about being invisible.
There was also the Hollywood Strangler, and a man alleged to be the Freeway Killer was on trial for the torture sex murders of a dozen young boys. Great place to raise children. She folded the paper. Time to wax the kitchen floor, she decided. Ed didn't care much, but his colonel would come to dinner next week, and Colonel McReady's wife was inclined to snoop. Besides, it wasn't that hard to do floors.

Ed wouldn't approve. Not now. She grinned and looked down at her stomach. Didn't show a bit. She wasn't sick, either, and if it hadn't been for the missed periods and medical reports there'd be no reason to suspect she was pregnant. Even so, Ed treated her like she was made of Dresden china. He carried out the garbage, did all the lifting, and worried about hurting her during sex.