"Andre Norton - Forerunner 01 - Storm over Warlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

*3
*4
*5
*6
*7
 *8
*9
* 10
* 11
* 12
* 13
* 14
* 15
* 16
* 17



STORM OVER
WARLOCK
1 : DISASTER

The Throg task force struck the Terran Survey camp without warning a few minutes after dawn. The alien
invaders sent eye-searing lances of energy flashing back and forth across the base with methodical
accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last
of those yellow-red bolts fell, nothing human would be left alive down there. His teeth clamped hard upon
the thick stuff of the sleeve covering his thin forearm, and a scream of terror and rage was stillborn in his
heart.

More than caution kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching that holocaust below, Shann
Lantee could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg attack left him momentarily
weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eyewitness to such action, were two vastly
different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth of the Survey Corps uniform.

As yet he had sighted none of the aliens, only their plateshaped flyers. They would stay aloft until their
long-range weapon cleared out all opposition. But how had they been able to annihilate the Terran force so
completely? The last report had placed the nearest Throg nest at least two systems away from Warlock.
And a patrol lane had been drawn about the Circe system the minute that Survey had marked its second
planet ready for colonization. Somehow the beetles had slipped through that supposedly tight cordon and
would now consolidate their gains with their usual speed. Once their energy attack finished the small
Terran force, then they would simply take over.

A month later, or maybe two months, and they could not have done it. The grids would have been up, and
any Throg ship venturing into Warlock's amber-tinted sky would abruptly cease to be. In the race for
survival as a galactic power, Terra had that one small edge over the swarms of the enemy. They need only
stake out their new-found world and get the grids assembled on its surface; then that planet would be
locked to the beetles. The critical period was between the first discovery of a suitable colony world and the
completion of grid control. Planets in the past had been lost during that time lag, just as Warlock was being
lost now.