"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Hunters of the Red Moon - 1973" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

With savage effort, he twisted his head around so that he could see the great looming ship. Slowly, slowly, a hatchway was opening, and a blinding light shining from inside, but Dane Marsh hit the deck and lay there, clawing faintly as he struggled to rise.

By the time the deck swayed under the strange alien step, he was unconscious, still struggling in his dreams.

They were off the jet routes and _way off the shipping lanes, and no other eye on Earth saw the great ship before it winked out of normal space five miles above the central Pacific Ocean. The _Seadrift was found, empty, drifting, five weeks later by a yacht bound for Hawaii . . .



CHAPTER



TWO

Dane Marsh came up to awareness with a savage pain in his throat, rising up out of confused nightmares of wild beasts clawing at his jugular vein, of spurting blood and smells which somehow roused an atavistic terror (lions, fresh blood, the faint rottenness of something dead), and then, all at once, he was conscious. His eyes, flicking open, took in all at once the white cold surroundings, the two forms (nightmare! Man-tall, but flat-faced, _furred-a lion's mane!) bending over him. The

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needles still in his throat. He ripped, tensed swelling muscles, straggled to cry out, but only a tearing numbness lanced with split-second prickles of agony burst his throat

He was strapped down. Tied, hand and foot, not a muscle to move-

_Tortured!

He squeezed his eyes shut again, hi spasmodic horror, then, fighting for calm, slowly opened them. His throat was numb, now, without pain; had they tried to remove his vocal cords? The two lion-faced creatures had hands not too unlike human hands, working delicately about his throat, but now he felt no pain at all, only an odd numbness. Well, whatever the hell they were up to, he couldn't have moved an eyebrow to stop them, so they couldn't mean him all _that much harm if they went to this much trouble to anesthetize him.

He looked around. Odd metallic things hanging from smooth bulkheads; unidentifiable, but they'd have been equally baffling, he supposed, in a really up-to-date hospital. He studied the two lion-faced things. They had hands with, he realized, a double thumb, moving with extreme deft suppleness, and the hands were encased in thin cloth of some sort. They both wore coverall garments of gray-blue fabric. He wished he could see what they were doing with his throat. There was a sudden wrench as one of them twisted and adjusted something there, then he felt the painless prick and tug; they were sewing him up. One of them touched him briefly with a long light-tipped wand, and spoke aloud,

"You'd think sooner or later some of these savages would realize we're not trying to hurt them, but they all fight like fiends," the first one said. "This one's not as bad as most. Is he hooked up yet?"

Dane Marsh blinked. Were they speaking English? No, if he listened carefully he could hear the curious guttural syllables, but they made sense....

"I think so, I'll try him," the second, slightly taller one said, and bent over Dane Marsh. "Please don't struggle, and we will let you go; we don't want you to injure yourself. We have simply equipped you with an implanted translator disk. See, now you can understand what is said to you. Please tell me if you can hear and understand what I am saying."

Dane Marsh found that the straps holding him to the table were slackened slightly so that he could sit up, although his wrists were still strapped down. He ran Ms tongue over dry lips. He felt parched. His voice felt hoarse and strange as he said, "Yes, I can hear you all right. What-where am I? How did I get here? What do you want with me?"

"All right," said one to the other. "Successful. I don't like the ones where they never do understand, and we have to treat them like cattle. Nice work."

"Mmm, yes. Not much area for the disk in this one. I was afraid I'd cut a nerve. I haven't had much luck with proto-simians. Okay, take him back to the rest, then."

Dane shouted, "Answer me, damn you! What do you want with me? How did I get here? Who are you people, anyway?"

One of the lion-faced things said, "This is the part that always gets me. When they start asking for answers. It's a lousy job, all things considered." He prodded Dane with the light-tipped wand; Dane flinched with the sharp, painful electric shock.

The other creature said, "No need for that, Ferati, he isn't one of the dangerous kind. Anyway, there's a tangler field up there if we need it." He looked at Dane, warily loosing his wrist straps and said, "It isn't our duty to answer your questions, but they will be answered in due time. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by being patient. In a few minutes someone will come to take you back to your quarters. Now if you will go peacefully, perhaps we can make you a little more comfortable. Is your mouth dry? That's only the aftereffects of the anesthetic and the tangler field they used when they brought you on board. Here, try this." He handed Dane a disposable cup of some liquid; Dane found he could move one hand. He sipped it gingerly and found it was sour but remarkably thirst-quenching.

Over his head one of them said, "I wonder if he's going to be one of the more intelligent and tractable ones."

"Hope so. The Old Man is always talking about getting a couple of real wild ones, but last time-"