"William Tenn - The Human Angle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

who have been in the Army since we finished our schooling. There isn't too much
choice. But I remembered that Monroe is half Indian-Arapahoe, isn't it, Monroe?-and
I'm hoping blood will tell."
"Only trouble, Colonel," Monroe said slowly as he rose, "is that I'm one-fourth
Indian and even that . . . Didn't I ever tell you that my great-grandfather was the only
Arapahoe scout who was with Custer at the Little Big Horn? He'd been positive
Sitting Bull was miles away. However, I'll do my best. And if I heroically don't come
back, would you please per-suade the Security Officer of our section to clear my
name for use in the history books? Under the circumstances, I think it's the least he
could do."
I promised to do my best, of course.

After he took off, I sat in the dome over the telephone connection to Tom and
hated myself for picking Monroe to do the job. But I'd have hated myself just as
much for picking Tom. And if anything happened and I had to tell Tom to blast off,
I'd probably be sitting here in the dome all by myself after that, waiting .. .
"Broz negglel" came over the radio in Monroe's resonant voice. He had landed the
single-seater.
I didn't dare use the telephone to chat with Tom in the ship, for fear I might miss
an important word or phrase from our scout. So I sat and sat and strained my ears.
After a while, I heard "Mishgashul" which told me that Monroe was in the
neighborhood of the other dome and was creeping toward it under cover of
whatever boulders were around.
And then, abruptly, I heard Monroe yell my name and there was a terrific clattering
in my headphones. Radio in-terference! He'd been caught, and whoever had caught
him had simultaneously jammed his suit transmitter with a larger transmitter from the
alien dome.
Then there was silence.
After a while, I told Tom what had happened. He just said, "Poor Monroe." I had
a good idea of what his expres-sion was like.
"Look, Tom," I said, "if you take off now, you still won't have anything important
to tell. After capturing Monroe, whatever's in that other dome will come looking for
us, I think. I'll let them get close enough for us to learn something of their
appearance-at least if they're human or non-human. Any bit of information about
them is important. I'll shout it up to you and you'll still be able to take off in plenty of
time. All right?"
"You're the boss, Colonel," he said in a mournful voice. "Lots of luck."
And then there was nothing to do but wait. There was no oxygen system in the
dome yet, so I had to squeeze up a sandwich from the food compartment in my suit.
I sat there, thinking about the expedition. Nine years, and all that care-ful secrecy, all
that expenditure of money and mind-cracking research-and it had come to this.
Waiting to be wiped out, in a blast from some unimaginable weapon. I understood
Monroe's last request. We often felt we were so secret that our immediate superiors
didn't even want us to know what we were working on. Scientists are people-they
wish for recognition, too. I was hoping the whole expedition would be written up in
the history books, but it looked unpromising.

Two hours later, the scout ship landed near the dome. The lock opened and, from
where I stood in the open door of our dome, I saw Monroe come out and walk
toward me.