"Eric Frank Russell - Late Night Final" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

complained to Somir. "She must be dull-witted to waste her breath thus."
"Yes, sir," agreed Somir. "Do you wish me to hand them over to the tutors?"
"No. They're not worth it." He eyed the small boy's freck-les with distaste, never
having seen such a phenomenon before. "They are badly spotted and may be
diseased. Pfaugh!" He grimaced with disgust. "Did they pass through the
ray-sterilizing chamber as they came in?"
"Certainly, sir. I was most careful about that."
"Be equally careful about any more you may encounter." Slowly, his authoritative
stare went from the boy to the pig-tailed girl and finally to the tall one. He didn't want
to look at her, yet knew that he was going to. Her cool green eyes held something
that made him vaguely uncomfortable. Un-willingly he met those eyes. She smiled
again, with little dimples. "Kick 'em out!" he rapped at Somir.
"As you order, sir."
Nudging them, Somir gestured toward the door. The three took hold of each other's
hands, filed out.
"Bye!" chirped the boy, solemnly.
"Bye!" said pigtails, shyly.
The tall girl turned in the doorway. "Good-by!"
Gazing at her uncomprehendingly, Cruin fidgeted in his chair. She dimpled at him,
then the door swung to.
"Good-by." He mouthed the strange word to himself. Con-sidering the
circumstances in which it had been uttered, evi-dently it meant farewell. Already he
had picked up one word of their language.
"Step seven: Gain communication by tutoring specimens until they are proficient in
Huldian."
Teach them. Do not let them teach youтАФteach them. The slaves must learn from the
masters, not the masters from the slaves.
"Good-by." He repeated it with savage self-accusation. A minor matter, but still an
infringement of the book of rules. There are no excuses for anything.
Teach them.
The slaves

Rockets rumbled and blasted deafeningly as ships maneu-vered themselves into the
positions laid down in the manual of defense. Several hours of careful belly-edging
were re-quired for this. In the end, the line had reshaped itself into two more groups
of eleven-pointed stars, noses at the centers, tails outward. Ash of blast-destroyed
grasses, shrubs and trees covered a wide area beyond the two menacing rings of
main propulsion tubes which could incinerate anything within one mile.
This done, perspiring, dirt-coated crews lugged out their forward armaments,
remounted them pointing outward in the spaces between the vessels' splayed tails.
Rear armaments still aboard already were directed upward and outward. Arm-aments
plus tubes now provided a formidable field of fire completely surrounding the
double encampment. It was the Huldian master plan conceived by Huldian master
planners. In other more alien estimation, it was the old covered-wagon technique, so
incredibly ancient that it had been forgotten by all but most earnest students of the
past. But none of the invaders knew that.
Around the perimeter they staked the small, fast, well-armed scouts of which there
were two per ship. Noses outward, tails inward, in readiness for quick take-off, they
were paired just beyond the parent vessels, below the propulsion tubes, and out of
line of the remounted batteries. There was a lot of moving around to get the scouts