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

which, in turn, would provoke an uproar. Paul Meillard didn't want that happening until he'd concluded
the cattle-trade.

Charley Loughran and Willi Schallenmacher had gone up to the ship on one of the landing craft; they
accompanied the landing party that went down into the mountains. Ayesha Keithley arrived late in the
afternoon on another landing craft, with five or six tons of instruments and parts and equipment, and a
male Navy warrant-officer helper.

They looked around the lab Lillian had been using at one end of the headquarters hut.

"This won't do," the girl Navy officer said. "We can't get a quarter of the apparatus we're going to need in
here. We'll have to build something."

Dave Questell was drawn into the discussion. Yes, he could put up something big enough for everything
the girls would need to install, and soundproof it. Concrete, he decided; they'd have to wait till he got the
water line down and the pump going, though.

There was a crowd of natives in the fields, gaping at the Terran camp, the next morning, and Gofredo
decided to kill the animalтАФuntil they learned the native name, they were calling it Domesticated Type C.
It was herded out where everyone could watch, and a Marine stepped forward unslung his rifle took a
kneeling position, and aimed at it. It was a hundred and fifty yards away. Mom had come out to see what
was going on; Sonny and Howell, who had been consulting by signs over the construction of a wagon,
were standing side by side. The Marine squeezed his trigger. The rifle banged, and the Domesticated-C
bounded into the air, dropped, and kicked a few times and was still. The natives, however, missed that
part of it; they were howling piteously and rubbing their heads. All but Sonny. He was just mildly
surprised at what had happened to the Dom.-C.

Sonny, it would appear, was stone deaf.

As anticipated, there was another uproar later in the morning when the ditching machine started north
across the meadow. A mob of Svants, seeing its relentless progress toward a field of something like
turnips, gathered in front of it, twittering and brandishing implements of agriculture, many of them
Terran-made.

Paul Meillard was ready for this. Two lorries went out; one loaded with Marines, who jumped off with
their rifles ready. By this time, all the Svants knew what rifles would do beside make a noise. Meillard,
Dorver, Gofredo and a few others got out of the other vehicle, and unloaded presents. Gofredo did all
the talking. The Svants couldn't understand him, but they liked it They also liked the presents, which
included a dozen empty half-gallon rum demijohns, tarpaulins, and a lot of assorted knickknacks. The
pipeline went through.

He and Sonny got the forge set up. There was no fuel for it. A party of Marines had gone out to the
woods to the east to cut wood; when they got back, they'd burn some charcoal in the pit that had been
dug beside the camp. Until then, he and Sonny were drawing plans for a wooden wheel with a metal tire
when Lillian came out of the headquarters hut with a clipboard under her arm. She motioned to him.

"Come on over," he told her. "You can talk in front of Sonny; he won't mind. He can't hear."

"Can't hear?" she echoed. "You meanтАФ?"