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

on whether we'll do these people more harm than good."

Two more landing craft had come down from the Hubert Penrose; they found Dave Questell
superintending the unloading of more prefab-huts, and two were already up that had been brought down
with the first landing.

A name for the planet had also arrived.

"Svantovit," Karl Dorver told him. "Principal god of the Baltic Slavs, about three thousand years ago.
Guy Vindinho dug it out of the 'Encyclopedia of Mythology.' Svantovit was represented as holding a bow
in one hand and a horn in the other."

"Well, that fits. What will we call the natives; Svantovitians, or Svantovese?"

"Well, Paul wanted to call them Svantovese, but Luis persuaded him to call them Svants. He said
everybody'd call them that, anyhow, so we might as well make it official from the start."

"We can call the language Svantovese," Lillian decided. "After dinner, I am going to start playing back
recordings and running off audiovisuals. I will be so happy to know that I have a name for what I'm
studying. Probably be all I will know."

After dinner, he and Karl and Paul went into a huddle on what sort of gifts to give the natives, and the
advisability of trading with them, and for what. Nothing too far in advance of their present culture level.
Wheels; they could be made in the fabricating shop aboard the ship.

"You know, it's odd," Karl Dorver said. "These people here have never seen a wheel, and, except in
documentary or historical-drama films, neither have a lot of Terrans."

That was true. As a means of transportation, the wheel had been completely obsolete since the
development of contragravity, six centuries ago. Well, a lot of Terrans in the Year Zero had never seen a
suit of armor, or an harquebus, or even a tinder box or a spinning wheel.

Wheelbarrows; now there was something they'd find useful. He screened Max Milzer, in charge of the
fabricating and repair shops on the ship. Max had never even heard of a wheelbarrow.

"I can make them up, Mark; better send me some drawings, though. Did you just invent it?"

"As far as I know, a man named Leonardo da Vinci invented it, in the Sixth Century Pre-Atomic. How
soon can you get me half a dozen of them?"

"Well, let's see. Welded sheet metal, and pipe for the frame and handles. I'll have some of them for you
by noon tomorrow. Now, about hoes; how tall are these people, and how long are their arms, and how
far can they stoop over?"

They were all up late, that night. So were the Svants; there was a fire burning in the middle of the village,
and watch-fires along the edge of the mound. Luis Gofredo was just as distrustful of them as they were of
the Terrans; he kept the camp lighted, a strong guard on the alert, and the area of darkness beyond infra
red lighted and covered by photoelectric sentries on the ground and snoopers in the air. Like Paul
Meillard, Luis Gofredo was a worrier and a pessimist. Everything happened for the worst in this worst of
all possible galaxies, and if anything could conceivably go wrong, it infallibly would. That was probably