"Bc21" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

Chaka laughed. "You have no sense of drama. Cassandra. Trigger the implant."
The snouter heaved once, massively, crashed back down, and was utterly still.
The largest spider devil came a little closer, probing. It didn't seem to like the sudden stillness, but the nearness of fresh meat was too much for it. It descended, sank fangs, and went to work. The others followed, and the scene turned into a general feast. An entire colony of the spider devils was home for dinner.
After five minutes, Chaka stood. "Let's go," he said. "Motion sensors?"
"Nothing larger than ten kilos. No sudden shifts in wind."
"All right. Let's go."
Rifles at the ready, they entered the forest in a modified wing formation.
Spongy loam underfoot. Smells of camphor and lemon. Everything seemed to smell more vibrant than the colors that exploded around them. The forest canopy wasn't particularly high here, but every tree limb was ripe and heavy with leaves, and vines, and fruit . . . or things that looked like fruit.
Just out of Justin's reach hung something purple and bulbous, like a cluster of fused grapes, or a blackberry. He reached out and prodded it with the tip of his rifle, and it dissolved into a colony of marble-sized purple leggy things that swarmed up the branch to re-form a few feet farther away.
He wondered what would have happened if he had touched it with his naked hand.
That wouldn't be possible right now. They wore lightweight membrane suits that covered their entire bodies with a thin, tough barrier impenetrable to all but the most determined attacker. An entirely reasonable precaution: Chaka had already categorized at least twelve deadly plants and identified three toxic species. Small things, with a biotoxin about a dozen times stronger than a wasp. Not lethal to an adult, they would still grant a few days of truly memorable sensation.
A couple of lizard-like things perched on branches. Unclassified. Cute. Venomous or worse.
They were in the clearing now. The light slanted down through the trees, giving a louvered effect.
"Motion sensors?"
Jessica checked a wrist sensor. "Nothing for a hundred meters."
They knelt, and examined their take. The snouter was both withered and half-devoured. The spider devils had first sucked his juice, then ripped him apart.
They lay on their sides, motionless. Their faces were tiny but manlike, lips slightly parted. One, the largest, lay on its back. Its legs closed feebly on Chaka's tongs when he prodded it.
"Alive." He picked it up and examined it. The four legs quivered. Legs and torso were covered with straight black hair. These were mammaloids, Joeys, though evolved in a drastically different direction. Wet-looking lips drooled something thin and milky.
"Close your mouth while you chew," Chaka said, and unfolded his basket to drop them in one at a time.
"All of them?" Justin asked.
"Sure. They might be some kind of hive mind. Might not even be able to survive separated. I'll get them ready to ship back to Father." He grinned. "Of course, they may have ice on their minds."
Jessica and Justin examined the web. She was scraping goo from what seemed to be an enormous mat of thin vines, and putting a bit of it into a sample bottle.
"What the hell is it?" Justin asked, scratching his head.
"It looks like a lattice of leaves," she said. "They chewed up the connective fibers, leaving just this heavy venous stuff. Then they coated it with something sticky, probably a biological exudate."
"So it's not a true web."
"No. They're interacting with the environment."
"A bit chancy. They're vulnerable to the quality of the materials."
"No more than a beaver," Chaka said.
"Why would a tree want to make something useful to a spider devil?"
"Maybe they furnish the tree with high-energy droppings."
Her sample bottle had everything that it needed, and she snapped it shut. "Let's get out of here. I don't feel all that comfortable here."
"Come now. The woods are lovely, dark and deep."
"Yeah, right. But I have promises to keep."
"Right." They unclipped a rod from the side of the basket, extended it, and threaded it through loops at the top. Chaka hoisted it over one shoulder, and Jessica took the other end. Justin kept his rifle at the ready, movement and thermal sensors tuned.
And they encountered no problems at all, all the way back to the trikes.

The NickNack was a much smaller version of Robor, a cargo mover ballasted by hydrogen sacks, large enough to carry a dozen people and small enough to be powered by a single skeeter. It was reliable so long as they didn't run into bad weather.
Cigar-shaped, it hovered above the animal pens. The spider devils were frozen, the dozens of plant and insect specimens neatly and safely stowed away. They would easily survive the eight-hour trip.
Eight hours as the pterodon flies. On the other hand, to paraphrase the old joke, if the pterodon had to walk and herd a group of recalcitrant chamels, it would take twelve times as long.
"Aaron will be back by morning," Jessica said. "Then we can start them moving. Cassandra? Map."
A contour map showing a quarter of the continent opened in the air before them.
"Close on our position, Cassie. Good enough. Group, we need to water the chamels daily. We need to clear the water holes of grendels before we get to them. Trikes, horses, and skeeters are the ticket. We leapfrog ahead. Should take four days. Any questions?"
Jessica leaned back against the log. She could hear the chamels snorting in their pens. The males bonded readily to horses doused in chamel scent, and the larger females would follow the males. Her stomach buzzed with adrenaline. A new adventure. What they had fought for, bargained for . . .
Died for . . .
She sloshed her coffee down on the ground, and stood. "Let's get a good night's sleep tonight, and get started early."
"Aye."
"Aye."
The fences, the generators, the shelters, and a cache of weapons would be left behind. Eventually, there would be supply stations all over the southern tip of the continent. Forty-eight hours of juice in the fences, and enough weapons to make a hell of a stand before help arrived, with help never more than twelve hours away.
She high-fived Chaka. "Good job."
He grinned broadly. Chaka was just happy to be totally swamped with specimens. He wandered off to search for new fronds to tag.