"Biped" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Basil)

could reach his side I had slashed down through his guard and laid open his
shoulder to the collar-bone.
I turned, just in time, and my heavy knife sent Dav's blade--and spinning. Then
I dared a quick glance toward the empty cache and swore.
The D grav tilted upward from a sturdy cottonwood branch, the same one I had
used before, and beneath the tree, clutching the mooring rope, sat Inya!
"Inya!" I cried. "You knew?"
"Yes, Morton," sobbed the girl. "I knew that you would not be willing to lose
your legs even for me. And I love you too much to ask it."
I kissed her once, hastily, slashed at the mooring line and jumped upward with
all my power. Upward shot the D grav, so swiftly that the flung knives of my
pursuers fell far short. Then I was hooking my arms through the loops of my
harness and fighting against the downward surge of gravity all the while.
At last my straps were buckled into place and I was drifting slowly downward
once more out over the main valley. I dropped several chunks of rock from the
ballast sack beside me to halt my descent and looked back toward the little
glade beside the pool.
Inya was there, her eyes fixed sadly on me. I waved to her and she replied. Then
she flung herself prone on the soft grass, her shoulders heaving convulsively as
great sobs tore at her body.
My own eyes were not dry as I drifted higher and higher into the clear dry air
above the canyon of N'voo.
Then I was above the weathered rimrock and splintered crags that hemmed in that
fertile oasis, drifting slowly away on a hot breeze toward a world where men did
not walk on their hands....



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