"E. E. Doc Smith - The Galaxy Primes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

And why?
He probed - carefully but thoroughly. When he had talked to the Arpalone he had read him easily enough, but here
there was nothing whatever to read. The creature simply was not thinking at all. But that didn't make sense! Garlock
tuned, first down, then up; and finally, at the very top of his range, he found something, but he did not at first know
what it was. It seemed to be a mass-detector ... no, two of them, paired and balanced. Oh, that was it! One tuned to
humanity, one to the other Guardians - balanced across a sort of bridge - that was how they kept the ratio so
constant! But why? There seemed to be some wide-range receptors there, too, but nothing seemed to be coming in...
While he was still studying and still baffled, some kind of stimulus, which was so high and so faint and so alien that
he could neither identify nor interpret it, touched the guardian's far-flung receptors. Instantly the creature jumped, his
powerful, widely-bowed legs sending him high above the heads of the crowd and, it seemed to Garlock, directly
toward him. Simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched, whistling scream, somewhat like the noise made by
an airplane in a no-power dive; and Garlock saw, out of the corner of one eye, a yellowish something flashing
downward through the air.
At the same moment the woman immediately in front of Garlock stifled a scream and jumped backward, bumping
into
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him and almost knocking him down. He staggered, caught his balance, and automatically put his arm around her to
keep her from falling to the sidewalk.
In the meantime the guardian, having landed very close to the spot the woman had occupied a moment before, leaped
again, this time vertically upward. The thing, whatever it was, was now braking frantically with wings, tail, and
body-trying madly to get away. Too late. There was a bone-crushing impact as the two bodies came together in
midair, and a jarring thud as the two creatures, inextricably intertwined, struck the pavement as one.
The first thing varied in color, Garlock now saw, shading from bright orange at the head to pale yellow at the tail. It
had a savagely-tearing curved beak, and tremendously powerful wings; its short, thick legs ended in hawk-like
talons.
The guardian's bowed legs had already immobilized the yellow wings by clamping them solidly against the yellow
body. His two lower arms were holding the frightful talons out of action. His third hand gripped the orange throat;
his fourth was exerting tremendous force against the jointure of neck and body. The neck, originally short, was
beginning to stretch.
For several seconds Garlock had been half-conscious that his accidental companion was trying, with more and more
energy, to disengage his encircling left arm from her waist. He wrenched his attention away from the spectacular
fight - to which no one else, not even the near-victim, had paid the slightest attention - and now saw that he had his
arm around the bare waist of a statuesque matron whose entire costume would have made perhaps half of a Tellurian
sunsuit. He dropped his arm with a quick and abject apology.
'I should apologize to you instead, Captain Garlock,' she thought, with a wide and friendly smile, 'for knocking you
down, and I thank you for catching me before I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I would not have
been, except that this it the first time that I, personally, have been attacked.'
'But what are they?' Garlock blurted.
'I don't know.' The woman turned her head and glanced, in complete disinterest, at the two furiously-battling
creatures. Garlock knew now that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill of surprise at being
the actual target
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of an attack, that she had thought of either one of them. 'Orange-yellow? It could be a ... a fumapty, perhaps, but I've
no idea, really. You see, such things are none of our business.'
She thought at him a half-shrug, half grimace of mild distaste - not at the personal contact with the man nor at the
savage duel, but at even thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monster - and walked away into the crowd.
Oarlock's attention flashed back to the fighters. The yellow thing's neck had been stretched to twice its natural length
and the guardian had eaten almost through it. There was a terrific crunch, a couple of smacking, gobbling swallows,
and head parted from body. The orange beak still clashed open and shut, however, and the body thrashed violently.
Shifting his grips, the guardian proceeded to tear a hole into his victim's body, just below its breast-bone. Thrusting