"Tom Purdom - The Tree Lord of Imeten" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

been studying to be a biologist, the scientific vocation the settlement
needed most, and the indispensable element in his vision of a happy,
meaningful life was a picture of himself doing something others would find
useful or interesting. He couldn't imagine life without some kind of work.
They had killed his friend and his father, and then, as if they were doing
him a favor, they had robbed him of the thing he needed mostтАФthe chance
to accomplish something he could consider meaningful. In one day they
had come as close to killing him as they could without actually sending a
bullet smashing through his brain.
Something shrieked behind him. He let go of the cart handle. Passing the
club to his right hand, he whirled. "That was on the ground."
In the cart the rabbits stirred restlessly. Something knocked rhythmically
and he realized it was Joanne's club banging against the side of the cart.
He blinked at the darkness. In nine years no human had ever left the
plateau. Anything could prowl this forest. After the refugees crowded into
the starship had decided the towers and statues looming over the trees had
to be structures built by intelligent beings, his father had argued
monotonously that caution was the only responsible policy when you were
dealing with the unknown. There had been some violent arguments but in
the end his father's faction had won out. As the last free human minds left in
the universe, they couldn't afford to take any risks.
He could still remember every detail of the bitter moment when they had
orbited the planet and learned that, after spending thirty years in space and
visiting two star systems, the first habitable planet they had discovered
wasтАФagainst all the oddsтАФapparently already inhabited. They had thought
about going on to another star, but thirty years in a spaceship, with two
hundred and sixty people living in a space originally planned for a hundred,
had been as much as most of them could tolerate.
He listened. Even if he heard something, he couldn't be sure he would
interpret it correctly. On Earth a predator would have moved in silently, or
they might have heard the faint padding of cushioned paws, or claws
scratching on stone or bark, but here a predator might have evolved in ways
no human could hope to imagine. The birds and small animals he had
studied on the plateau had differed from Earth life just enough that anything
had to be considered possible.
 He turned around and gripped the handle. "Let's go. Are you getting
tired?"
"I'm all right. I'll be ready to eat pretty soon."
"I'm getting hungry, too." Since morning he had eaten nothing but the
soup and the pound of uncooked steak-plant she had brought him after she
went to tell Emile he accepted the bargain. Even a hunk of cheese fungus
seemed appetizing. "Don't talk much. We might as well keep going, but I
want to listen."
"It sounded a little human, didn't it?"
"That's what I thought."
He checked their course against his wrist compass. His stomach felt
nervous. If only he had a rifle! They had even refused to give him seeds for
growing explosives.
The cartwheels creaked at his back. In the distance he could still hear the
faint roar of the waterfall. Two hours more and they could stop to sleep.