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

"Gorkrink does," Murillo said, uncorking the bottle and pouring into the plastic cups. "None of
them can speak it, of course, because of the structure of their vocal organs, any more than we can
speak their languages without artificial aids. But I can talk to him in Lingua Terra without
having to put one of those damn gags in my mouth, and he can pass my instructions on to the
others. He's been a big help; I'll be sorry to lose him."

"Lose him?"

"Yes, his year's up; he's going back to Uller on the Canberra. You know, it's impossible to keep
some trace of fluorine from the air in the handling-machines, or even out on the orbiters, and it
plays the devil with their lungs. He wanted to stay on another three months, to help with the next
shot, but the medics wouldn't hear of it-----He's from Keegark, wherever on Uller that is; claims
to be a prince, or something. I know all the other geeks kowtow to him. But he's a damn good
worker. Very smart; picks things up the first time you tell him. I'll recommend him unqualifiedly
for any kind of work with contragravity or mechanized equipment."

They all had drinks, now, except the chief engineer, who wanted a rain-check on his.

"Well, here's to us," Murillo said. "The first A-bomb miners in history..."

Chapter I- Commander-in-Chief Front and Center

General Carlos von Schlichten threw his cigarette away, flexed his hands in his gloves, and set
his monocle more firmly in his eye, stepping forward as the footsteps on the stairway behind him
ceased and the other officers emerged from the squat flint keep-Captain Cazabielle, the post CO;
big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe; little Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary.
Far in front of him, to the left, the horizon was lost in the cloudbank over Takkad Sea; directly
in front, and to the right, the brown and gray and black flint mountains sawed into the sky until
they vanished in the distance. Unseen below, the old caravan-trail climbed one side of the pass
and slid down the other, a sheer five hundred feet below the parapet and the two corner catapult-
platforms which now mounted 90-mm guns. On the little hundred-foot-square parade ground in front
of the keep, his aircar was parked, and the soldiers were assembled.

Ten or twelve of them were Terrans-a couple of lieutenants, sergeants, gunners, technicians, the
sergeant-driver and corporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ulleran natives. They
stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had four arms apiece, one pair from true
shoulders and the other connected to a pseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-
gray and rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had been formed from
perspiration, for their body-tissues were silicone instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads
were unpleasantly saurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, and slit-like nostrils, and
wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Except for their belts and equipment, they were
completely naked; the uniform consisted of the emblem of the Chartered Uller Company stencil-
painted on chests and backs. Clothing, to them, was unnecessary, either for warmth or modesty. As
to the former, they were cold-blooded and could stand a temperature-range of from a hundred and
twenty to minus one hundred Centigrade. Von Schlichten had seen them sleeping in the open with
their bodies covered with frost or freezing rain; he had also seen them wade through boiling
water. As to the second, they had practically no sex-inhibitions; they were all of the same
gender, true, functional, hermaphrodites. Any individual among them could bear young, or fertilize
the ova of any other individual. Fifteen years ago, when he had come to Uller as a former Terran