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

ground. Faster and faster the explosions came as the Operator and the Primes learned the routine of the job.
Nor were they long alone. The roaring, screaming howl of jets came up from behind them; four Arpalones appeared
at their left, strung out along the front. Each held an extraordinarily heavy-duty blaster in each of his four hands;
sixteen terrific weapons were hurling death into the flying horde.
'Slide over, Tellurians,' came a calm thought. 'You three take their left front; we'll take their right and center.'
As they obeyed the instructions: 'They don't give a damn where the pieces fly!' Belle protested. 'Why should we be
fussy about their street-cleaning department? I'm starting to use fives.'
'Okay. We'll have to hit 'em harder, anyway, to keep up. Five, or maybe six - just be damn sure not to knock us or the
Arpalones out of the air.'
Carnage went on. The battlefront, while inside the city limits, was now almost stationary.
'Ha! Help arriveth - I hear feetsteps approaching on jet-back,' Garlock announced. 'Give 'em hell, boys!'
48
A flight of fighter-planes, eight abreast and wing-tips almost touching, howled close overhead and along the line of
invasion. They could not fire, of course, until they reached the city limits. There they opened up as one, and the air
below became literally filled with falling monsters. Some had only broken wings; some were dead, but more or less
whole; many were blown into unrecognizable bits of scraps of flesh.
Another flight screamed into place immediately behind the first; then another and another and another until six
flights had passed. Then came four helicopters, darting and hovering, whose gunners picked off individually
whatever survivors had managed to escape all six waves of fighters.
'That's better,' came a thought from the Arpalone nearest Garlock. 'Situation under control, thanks to you Tellurians.
Supposed to be two squads of us gunners, but the other squad was busy on another job. Without you, this could have
developed into a fairly nasty little infection. I don't know what you're doing or how you're doing it - we were told
that you weren't like other humans, and how true that is - but I'm in favor of it I thought there were four of you?'
'One of us is not a fighter.'
'Oh. You can knock off now, if you like. We'll polish off. Thanks much.'
'But don't the boys on the ground need some help?'
The Arpales? Those idiots you have been thinking of as "guardians"? Which they are, of course. No. Besides, we're
air-fighters. Ground work is none of our business. Also, these guns would raise altogether too much hell down there.
Bound to hit some humans.'
'Check. Those Arpales aren't very intelligent; you Arpalones are extremely so. Any connection?'
'Way back, they say. Common ancestry, and doing two parts of the same job. Killing those fumapties and lemarts
and sencors and what-have-you. I don't know what humanity's job is and don't give a damn. Probably fairly
important, though, some way or other, since it's our job to see that the silly, gutless things keep on living. We have
nothing to do with 'em, ever. The only reason I'm talking to you is you're not really human at all. You're a fighter,
too, and a damn good one.'
'I know what you mean,' Garlock sent, and the three Tel-49
lurians turned their attention downward.
The heaviest fighting had been over a large park at the city's edge, which was now literally a shambles. Very few
people were to be seen, and those few were moving unconcernedly away from the center of violence. All over the
park thousands of Arpales were fighting furiously and hundreds of them were dying - for hundreds of the sencors had
suffered only wing injuries, the long fall to ground had not harmed them farther, and their tremendous fighting
ability had been lessened very little if at all.
'But I'd think, that just for efficiency if nothing else,' Gar-lock argued, 'you'd support the Arpales some way. Lighter
guns or something. Why, thousands of them must have been killed, just in this last hour or so.'
'Yeah, but that's their business. They breed fast and die fast. Everything has to balance, you know.'
'Perhaps so.' Garlock was silenced, if not convinced. 'Well, it's about over. What happens to the bodies they're
dumping down manholes? They can't go down a sewer that way?' 'Oh you didn't know? Food.' 'Food? For what?'
'The Arpales and us, of course.'
'What? You don't mean ... you can't mean that they - and you Arpalones, too - are cannibals?'
'Cannibals? Explain, please? Oh, eaters-of-our-own-species. Of course - certainly. Why not?'