"G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

'I was thinking what a present that'd be to take back to Mother Earth when a lot of racket
interrupted. We dashed back to the other side of the wheel in time to see one of the pushcarts ground up.
Some suicide had been careless, it seems.
'Then suddenly the creatures were booming and drumming all around us and their noise was
decidedly menacing. A crowd of them advanced toward us; we backed out of what I thought was the
passage we'd entered by, and they came rumbling after us, some pushing carts and some not. Crazy
brutes! There was a whole chorus of 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' I didn't like the 'ouch'; it was rather
suggestive.
'Tweel had his glass gun out and I dumped my water tank for greater freedom and got mine. We
backed up the corridor with the barrel-beasts following - about twenty of them. Queer thing - the ones
coming in with loaded carts moved past us inches away without a sign.
'Tweel must have noticed that. Suddenly, he snatched out that glowing coal cigar-lighter of his and
touched a cartload of plant limbs. Puff! The whole load was burning - and the crazy beast pushing it went
right along without a change of pace. It created some disturbance among our 'v-v-r-riends,' however -
and then I noticed the smoke eddying and swirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance
'I grabbed Tweel and out we dashed and after us our twenty pursuers. The daylight felt like Heaven,
though I saw at first glance that the sun was all but set, and that was bad, since I couldn't live outside my
thermo-skin bag in a Martian night - at least, without a fire.
'And things got worse in a hurry. They cornered us in an angle between two mounds, and there we
stood. I hadn't fired nor had Tweel; there wasn't any use in irritating the brutes. They stopped a little
distance away and began their booming about friendship and ouches.
'Then things got still worse! A barrel-brute came out with a pushcart and they all grabbed into it and
came out with handfuls of foot-long copper darts - sharp-looking ones - and all of a sudden one sailed
past my ear - zing! And it was shoot or die then.
'We were doing pretty well for a while. We picked off the ones next to the pushcart and managed to
keep the darts at a minimum, but suddenly there was a thunderous booming of 'v-v-r-riends' and
'ouches,' and a whole army of 'em came out of their hole.
'Man! We were through and I knew it! Then I realized that Tweel wasn't. He could have leaped the
mound behind us as easily as not. He was staying for me!
'Say, I could have cried if there'd been time! I'd liked Tweel from the first, but whether I'd have had
gratitude to do what he was doing - suppose I had saved him from the first dream-beast - he'd done as
much for me, hadn't he? I grabbed his arm, and said 'Tweel,' and pointed up, and he understood. He
said, 'No - no - no, Tick!' and popped away with his glass pistol.
'What could I do? I'd be a goner anyway when the sun set, but I couldn't explain that to him. I said,
'Thanks, Tweel. You're a man!' and felt that I wasn't paying him any compliment at all. A man! There are
mighty few men who'd do that.
'So I went 'bang' with my gun and Tweel went 'puff' with his, and the barrels were throwing darts and
getting ready to rush us, and booming about being friends. I had given up hope. Then suddenly an angel
dropped right down from Heaven in the shape of Putz, with his underjets blasting the barrels into very
small pieces!
'Wow! I let out a yell and dashed for the rocket; Putz opened the door and in I went, laughing and
crying and shouting! It was a moment or so before I remembered Tweel; I looked around in time to see
him rising in one of his nosedives over the mound and away.
'I had a devil of a job arguing Putz into following. By the time we got the rocket aloft, darkness was
down; you know how it comes here - like turning off a light. We sailed out over the desert and put down
once or twice. I yelled 'Tweel!' and yelled it a hundred times, I guess. We couldn't find him; he could
travel like the wind and all I got - or else I imagined it - was a faint trilling and twittering drifting out of the
south. He'd gone, and damn it! I wish - I wish he hadn't!'
The four men of the Ares were silent - even the sardonic Harrison. At last little Leroy broke the
stillness.