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

something new, something so absorbing that most of the tiring dull labor had ceased to exist except as
tasks to finish before he could return to the fascination of the animal runs.

Survey teams had early discovered the advantage of using mutated and highly trained Terran animals as
assistants in the exploration of strange worlds. From the biological laboratories and breeding farms on
Terra came a trickle of specialized assistants to accompany man into space. Some were fighters, silent,
more deadly than weapons a man wore at his belt or carried in his hands. Some were keener eyes, keener
noses, keener scouts than the human kind could produce. Bred for intelligence, for size, for adaptability to
alien conditions, the animal explorers from Terra were prized.

Wolverines, the ancient тАЬdevilsтАЭ of the northlands on Terra, were being tried for the first time on Warlock.
Their caution, a quality highly developed in their breed, made them testers for new territory. Able to tackle
in battle an animal three times their size, they should be added protection for the man they accompanied
into the wilderness. Their wide ranging, their ability to climb and swim, and above all, their curiosity were
significant assets.
Shann had begun contact by cleaning their cages; he ended captivated by these miniature bears with long
bushy tails. And to his unbounded delight the attraction was mutual. Alone to Taggi and Togi he was a
person, an important person. Those teeth, which could tear flesh into ragged strips, nipped gently at his
fingers. They closed without any pressure on arm, even on nose and chin in what was the ultimate caress of
their kind. Since they were escape artists of no mean ability, twice he had had to track and lead them back
to camp from forays of their own devising.

But the second time he had been caught by Fadakar, the chief of animal control, before he could lock up
the delinquents. And the memory of the resulting interview still had the power to make him flush with
impotent anger. ShannтАЩs explanation had been contemptuously brushed aside, and he had been delivered an
ultimatum. If his carelessness occurred again, he would be sent back on the next supply ship, to be
dismissed without an official sign-off on his work record, thus locked out of even the lowest level of
Survey for the rest of his life.

That was why Garth ThorvaldтАЩs act of the night before had made Shann brave the unknown darkness of
Warlock alone when he had discovered that the test animals were gone. He had to locate and return them
before Fadakar made his morning inspection; Garth ThorvaldтАЩs attempt to get him into bad trouble had
saved his life.

Shann cowered back, striving to make his huddled body as small as possible. One of the Throg flyers
appeared silently out of the misty amber of the morning sky, hovering over the silent camp. The aliens
were coming in to inspect the site of their victory. And the safest place for any Terran now was as far from
the vicinity of those silent domes as he could get. ShannтАЩs slight body was an asset as he wedged through
the narrow mouth of a cleft and so back into the cliff wall. The climb before him he knew in part, for this
was the path the wolverines had followed on their two other escapes. A few moments of tricky scrambling
and he was out in a cuplike depression choked with the purple-leaved brush of Warlock. On the other side
of that was a small cut to a sloping hillside, giving on another valley, not as wide as that in which the camp
stood, but one well provided with cover in the way of trees and high-growing bushes.

A light wind pushed among the trees, and twice Shann heard the harsh, rasping call of a clak-clakтАФone of
the batlike leather-winged flyers that laired in pits along the cliff walls. That present snap of two-tone
complaint suggested that the land was empty of strangers. For the clak-claks vociferously and loudly
resented encroachment on their chosen hunting territory.

Shann hesitated. He was driven by the urge to put as much distance between him and the landing Throg