"Pournelle, Jerry - Janissaries V1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

Parsons looked at him curiously.
"That's nothing of Labon's. Why shoot at it? And-I'm not sure we can hurt it. . .
"It is landing," Parsons said.
"Of course." Rick felt an inane urge to giggle. Why not? he thought. We're defeated, surrounded, every one of us marked for a firing squad within the week, so why not flying saucers too? He felt lightheaded, and it was not just the wine. He was glad that he hadn't tried the local equivalent of pot.
Flying saucers weren't real. They weren't even science fiction. The girl he liked to think of as his mistress-he knew she'd have resented the label, and he'd never used it in her hearing, but he liked to think of himself as a man who'd once had a mistress-had been interested in science fiction, and had got Rick to read some of the classics; but neither she nor her friends "believed in" flying saucers.
The thing settled on the hilltop. It was very large, as big as a 707, and it wasn't precisely saucer-shaped, although seen edge on at a distance it might give that appearance. It was more like half a football sliced lengthwise, nearly flat at the bottom. It did nothing for a moment. Then a bright orange rectangle opened in the center of one side.
Sergeant Elliot caught up to him. Other troopers crawled into the CP trench. "What do we do, Captain?" Elliot demanded.
"Keep the men at their posts. There are still a thousand Cubans out there," Rick said. He studied the bright opening. Nothing happened. The only sounds were mutters from his own troops, and no one-or no thing-came out. "Take over," he told Parsons. "I'm going to have a look."
Parsons spread his hands in a wide gesture, a typical French shrug. "You are mad. But I will go with you-"
"No." Rick stared at the ship again. For a moment he felt rising hope. Could this be an experimental plane, something kept secret by the CIA and sent to get him out? The Agency had got them into this mess and would be embarrassed if they were captured. "Elliot, get headquarters."
"Can't, sir. Radio stopped working about the time we saw that thing."
"Flying saucer," someone muttered.
Rick had heard the stories. When people saw flying saucers, electrical gear stopped working. Ignition, radios, TV-anything electrical. But so what? He willed himself to believe that the Agency had sent this craft to rescue him. It made sense, even to risk a secret craft, in order to save the embarrassment of political trials and- There was no point in just looking at it. He didn't want to go alone, but Parsons would have to remain in command, and Elliot would be needed to control the troops. He looked at the others who'd crawled into his CP. "Mason, come with me."
"Right." Mason was a corporal; a short, stocky man with a lot of self-confidence and a phlegmatic temperament. He'd do.
Rick slung his rifle and started forward. Mason carried his at the ready, walking just behind Rick. "I never believed in flying saucers," Mason said.
"Neither did I. Not sure I do now," Rick told him. "Could be the Agency coming for us."
"Yeah. Sure," Mason said.
Rick could guess how the man felt. Rick Galloway didn't believe it either. This was no illusion, no swamp gas. It wasn't the planet Venus or a weather balloon. This was a real ship which had silently landed on his hill, and it was too damned advanced to be anyone's secret weapon. Anyone with a fleet of ships like that could dictate terms to the whole world. The way it had come in, zipping along in silence and changing direction in random ways, it would be unstoppable by any missile or interceptor Rick had ever heard of.
He reached the lighted square. He could feel the troops behind staring at his back. The sounds of gunfire started up again off to the south, and probably half his troops had left their posts to come look at the ship. Others, though, were dug in, grimly waiting. They'd make the Cubans pay for the hill. But how long could they hold? Rick looked inside the ship.
The lighted square was a doorway into a small chamber about three meters on a side. There was no one inside, and there were few features to see except for what appeared to be sliding doors, closed, on three of the walls. The opening was less than two meters high, a bit low for Rick's six feet and a fraction. He stood outside looking in until he felt silly. Finally he shouted. "Anybody home?"
"Come in, Captain Galloway," a voice said. It was a perfectly ordinary male voice, nothing unearthly about it. "You have very little time, Captain. Come aboard."
"My God, maybe it is the Agency," Rick muttered. Whatever he'd expected, it hadn't been an ordinary human voice with an accent he couldn't place.
It spoke again. "You may leave your weapons outside. You will not need them, and they might tempt you to rash actions. If we wished you harm, Captain Galloway, you would be dead now."
That, Rick thought, was for sure. This thing- whatever it was-couldn't be worse than the Cubans. He unslung his rifle and laid it on the ground. Mason did the same, but threw him a significant look. Rick nodded. They both had knives, and Rick had his .45 automatic pistol under his jacket. He was certain that Mason had another.
The opening was inconveniently high off the ground, above waist level. "No gangplank for us," Rick told Mason. He put his hand on the sill. It felt like metal, but was slightly warm to the touch. "Here goes," he muttered, and vaulted in. Mason followed closely.
He had half-expected the opening to close once he was inside, but it did nothing. The doorway to his left slid open silently, revealing a short corridor. Rick gestured to Mason to follow and went down that. Another door slid open at the far end. The room beyond was very brightly lit.
He went in gingerly, feeling very much alone. Corporal Mason hadn't hesitated to lead an infantry attack on a Cuban tank two days before, and had himself crept up to it and blown off a tread with a satchel charge; he looked far more nervous now than when he went off to attack the tank. Rick wondered if he were as shaky as the corporal, tried to straighten up and get control of his face. It wouldn't do to let the troops see their officer shaken.
His eyes adjusted to the bright light. There were -beings-in the compartment. Three of them, and they were not human.


2


They were shaped like humans. They had two arms and two legs and two eyes, but the proportions were wrong. The shoulders were too high, almost as if they didn't have necks, and their heads rose from too-thick bodies. They wore clothing, coveralls of a shining metallic appearance, one dull grey, the other two in brighter colors that shimmered when they moved.
Their hands had only three fingers, but there were two thumbs-one on each side of a thick palm. They had no hair that Rick could see. Their lips were thin-far too thin to be human-and their mouths were too high on their strangely flat faces. Mouth too high, eyes too low, nose-not really a nose at all, Rick decided. Instead there was a fleshy snout-slit like a vertical second mouth. It rose until it almost reached the line joining the eyes.
It took an effort to look away from them and inspect the compartment. The room was nearly bare. All around the upper parts of the compartment there were screens, like TV sets but very thin. Some showed images: Rick's troops standing outside, Lieutenant Parsons and Sergeant Elliot talking and pointing, the machine-gun emplacements. The aliens seemed to have most of his defenses spotted, and their TV gave bright images although outside it was nearly pitch-dark.
The creatures sat at a long table placed crosswise to the door he had entered. It was too high-at least a foot higher than a table for humans would have been-and was transparent, but without the shimmer of glass, so that it was almost invisible. A small box with lights and colored squares rested on the table.
Rick had the impression of controls below some of the screens; at least there were flat plates about an inch square, some lit in bright colors, and others colored but dark. They might have been pushbuttons or touch-sensitive plates, but they might have been anything else. The room was as alien as the creatures.
Despite a strong desire to curl up in a corner and gibber, Rick studied the room carefully, trying to categorize and file the new information. He kept trying to convince himself this was a dream, but he knew better. Finally he was able to speak. "Hello." When the aliens spoke, both the mouth and nose slits moved. "You have very little time, Captain Galloway," the grey-clad alien said. The voice was very matter-of-fact. It sounded masculine, but Rick reminded himself that he didn't know the creature's sex. Or, he thought, if they even had sexes. "Perhaps too little. We may have waited too long. We are here to rescue you and your men."
"Who the hell-"
"Later. There is no time."
Sure, Rick thought. Later. But the alien was right. The Cubans were approaching rapidly. He tried to organize his thoughts, but it was difficult to accept what he was doing, that he was talking with- things. The spokesman-man? No. Not a man. Not a spokesman, either, his mind gibbered. He had no concepts to use. Finally he found his voice. "What do you want with us?"
"For you to get your men aboard. Quickly, before you have none left." The alien spread its hands, palm down, in a gesture that meant nothing to Rick. The tone of his voice had not changed, but it was not difficult to guess that the alien was impatient. "As we have said before and doubtless must say many times again, if we wished you harm, you would be dead. What can we do to you that the Cubans will not accomplish within a few hours?" The alien was obviously right, but that didn't make Rick feel much better. The "rescue" was not very appealing. "How do you know my name?" he demanded.
"From your radio. You have no more time for questions." This came from one of the creatures in bright coveralls. "You must act. Now."
"What about our weapons?"
"Bring them. Bring all of your equipment," Grey-coveralls said. "But quickly. When the Cubans are close enough to see us clearly, we must be gone. With or without you and your men."
"That's no choice at all, Cap'n," Corporal Mason said. "Better them than the Cubans." The trooper's voice was flat and without emotion.
"I'd thought of that," Rick said. He stood another moment in indecision, but he had made up his mind. "All right."
"Quickly," the alien urged.
"Sure. Come on, Mason-"