"H. Beam Piper - Naudsonce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

If Paul Meillard could accomplish that, he had it made. He would stay on with forty or fifty of the ship's
company to make preparations. In a year a couple of ships would come out from Terra, with a thousand
colonists, and a battalion or so of Federation troops, to protect them from the natives and vice versa.
Meillard would automatically be appointed governor-general.

But if he failed, he was through. Not outтАФjust through. When he got back to Terra, he would be
promoted to some home office position at slightly higher base pay but without the three hundred per cent
extraterrestrial bonus, and he would vegetate there till he retired. Every time his name came up,
somebody would say, "Oh, yes; he flubbed the contact on Whatzit."

It wouldn't do the rest of them any good, either. There would always be the suspicion that they had
contributed to the failure.

Bwaaa-waaa-waaanh!

The wavering sound hung for an instant in the air. A few seconds later, it was repeated, then repeated
again.

"Our cannon's a horn," Gofredo said. "I can't see how they're blowing it, though."

There was a stir to right and left, among the Marines deployed in a crescent line on either side of the
contact team; a metallic clatter as weapons were checked. A shadow fell in front of them as a
combat-car moved into position above.

"What do you suppose it means?" Meillard wondered.

"Terrains, go home." He drew a frown from Meillard with the suggestion. "Maybe it's supposed to
intimidate us."

"They're probably doing it to encourage themselves," Anna de Jong, the psychologist, said. "I'll bet
they're really scared stiff."

"I see how they're blowing it," Gofredo said. "The man who's walking behind it has a hand-bellows." He
raised his voice. "Fix bayonets! These people don't know anything about rifles, but they know what
spears are. They have some of their own."

So they had. The six who walked in the lead were unarmed, unless the thing one of them carried was a
spear. So, it seemed, were the hornbearers. Behind them, however, in an open-order skirmish-line, came
fifty-odd with weapons. Most of them had spears, the points glinting redly. Bronze, with a high copper
content. A few had bows. They came slowly; details became more plainly visible.

The leader wore a long yellow robe; the thing in his hand was a bronze-headed staff. Three of his
companions also wore robes; the other two were bare-legged in short tunics. The horn-bearers wore
either robes or tunics the spearmen and bowmen behind either wore tunics or were naked except for
breechclouts. All wore sandals. They were red-brown in color, completely hairless; they had long necks,
almost chinless lower jaws, and fleshy, beak-like noses that gave them an avian appearance which was
heightened by red crests, like roosters' combs, on the tops of their heads.

"Well, aren't they something to see?" Lillian Ransby, the linguist asked.