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

two arms into the opening, he yanked out two organs - one of which, Garlock thought, could have been the heart -
and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at least in a workmanlike and thoroughly competent fashion. He then
picked up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip of a wing with another, and marched up the street for half a block,
dragging the body behind him.
He lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupied hands, dropped the remains down the hole, and let the cover slam
back into place. He then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a long, black, extremely agile
tongue, and went on about his enigmatic business quite as though nothing had happened.
Garlock strolled around a few minutes longer, but could not recapture any interest in the doings of the human beings
around him. He had filed away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre aspects that he
could not think of anything else. Wherefore he flagged down a 'taxi' and was taken out to the Pleiades. Belle and
Lola were in the Main.
'I saw the damndest thing, Clee!' Lola exclaimed. 'I've been gnawing all my fingernails off clear up to the knuckles,
waiting for you I'
Lola's experience had been very similar to Oarlock's own, except that her monster was an intense green in color and
looked something like a bat about four feet long, with six-inch
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canine teeth and several stingers...
'Did you find out the name of the thing?' Garlock asked.
'No. I asked half a dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me except one half-grown boy, and the best he
could do was that it might be something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a "lemart".
And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out of anybody was just "guardians". Did you do any
better?'
'No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls all about his own experience.
'But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee.' Lola frowned. 'Where were they?'
'Way up - up here.' He showed her. 'Ill make a full tape tonight on everything I found out about the guardians and the
Arpalones - besides my regular report, I mean - since they're yours, and you can make me one about your friend the
green bat. Meanwhile, how are you coming, Belle?'
'Nice!' Belle's voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about
her fight with her captain. T'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up
some planetographical and planetological - notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit words? - Data on this
here planet Hodell.'
'Good going. You've been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing on. Does any of it make sense to you?'
'It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it.'
'Excuse me for changing the subject,' Lola said plaintively, 'but when, if ever, do we eat? Do we have to wait until
that confounded James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?'
'If you're hungry, we'll eat now.'
'Hungry? Look!' Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the small of her back, and with the other pressed
hard against her flat, taut belly. 'See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone - dangerously close to
the point of utter collapse.'
Garlock laughed and all three crossed the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James appeared
beside them.
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'Find out anything?' Garlock asked.
'Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain
only seventy-five miles from here. No, in that I didn't find any duplication of nebulary configurations with the stuff I
had with me. However, it was relatively coarse. Tomorrow I'll take a lot of fine stuff along. It'll take some time - a
full day, at least.'
'I expected that. Good going, Jim.'
All four ate heartily, and later they taped up the day's reports. Then, tired from their first real day's work in weeks, all