"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

That, in fact, was the trouble. The place looked fairly decent from the air, with a broad, meadowlike matting of light brown moss and lichen providing a surface through which brilliant, bright, and colorful flowers grew. From that vantage point the place was beautiful, which was why somebody had been interested in it.
In truth, it hadn't taken them long to discover that the world's beauty was literally skin-deep, its sun-drenched exterior a thin veneer covering this hell beneath, like an animal's skin covering the ugliness of the body's interior. The carpet soaked up rain like a sponge and slowly released the bulk of it below, causing a steady mist and drizzle that eventually collected on the swampy real surface, watering the huge internal plants that supported the outer layer. The upper-level plants also appeared to have some form of photosynthesis, but what fed the big plants in such quantity that they could grow tall and thick enough to support an entire outer layer hadn't yet been discovered. That was one of their jobs.
The only way to start in on a new world, after you'd poked, probed, measured, and sent robots down to see what was there,
was to pick a spot that looked interesting, go down, and see for yourself. There was a final question before heavily investing in a place that had to be answered, and bitter experience had shown that ultimately it could only be answered by one method.
The place has some potential. Now, before we go further, you all go on down there and see what tries to kill you.
It was a hell of a way to make a living, but it paid well, if you lived to enjoy it. Leader parties commanded the best short-term high-risk pay in the business, partly because experience had shown that they were the best -- and most cost-effective -- way to find out the worst quickly. The crew of the Widowmaker didn't like to take this sort of work -- nobody did -- but coming off two flat-out busts where the purchasers of worlds had gone bankrupt before paying anybody off, they needed a real infusion of cash or there wasn't going to be any ship, any team, or any job. Exploiters who lost their ships by going broke weren't exactly in demand by other teams, either. Everything they had was tied up in their ship and equipment; repossession meant more than ruin, it meant starvation in the harsh domain of the Exchange.
' 'Only an idiot would think of buying a place like this." Hama Kredner's high-pitched Durfur voice chimed in. "An idiot or a Durquist, anyway."
"What's your position, Kredner?" Tris Lankur asked, slowing making his way through the muck and trying to figure out a route between the dense black trunks. They didn't dare cut through -- not with that canopy up there.
"Twenty meters to I. P. north of you. I should be directly opposite you with the I. P. in the middle."
"I'm hung up for a good route forward," Lankur warned. "Don't go any further in until I reach an equal position. Any visibility?"
"I've got the I. P. beacon registering loud and clear but I can't see a bloody damned thing in this crap. Got fungus hanging all over the place like a curtain. I bet this place stinks to any race known to any civilization."
"Tris? What happened?" Modra called out, climbing up onto a huge angled trunk. She tried to squeeze through an opening that reason told her was impossibly small, but that the suit's computer said just might be big enough.
"I'm all right," he responded. "Tripped and fell on my face in the mud is all. This stuff is slimy as hell. Those damned roach-sized amoeboids or whatever they are that live in this crud are all over my suit and trying to burrow their way through. I may need a moment to burn them off."
"Take it easy," Modra cautioned him, and, by extension, everyone. "No need to rush this."
Tris Lankur was covered with the things, which experience had already shown couldn't be simply washed or brushed off. The only way to get rid of them was to divert power and feed a small charge through the exterior of the suit. It didn't kill them, but they tended to let go and get away fast from the burning sensation.
Modra looked to her left and saw a faint blue glow, her exterior sensors registering a sharp crackling sound. "I see you. Fry them little bastards!"
"That got 'em!" he announced with a note of triumph. "They're still splashing and making for the bottom to cool off the hotfoot!" He sighed. "You know, they say that in ancient days the real estate business was very peaceful and relaxing."
"Appraising a planet is a bit more complex than appraising a house," the Durquist noted matter-of-factly, missing the irony.
She let it pass. "Durquist -- can you make all our beacons?"
"I have you and Tris in view; Hama I cannot see. Must be something in the way."
"I'm here," the Durfur responded. "I'm stopped, but I wonder if that's such a good idea. I'm getting something, feeling something real bad. It's all around me, somehow. Like there's something here, so close I can almost smell it, but I can't put my finger on it."
Modra was an empath, able to sense emotions and sometimes manipulate them. The early surveys of this world had found nothing on any of the known telepathic bands beyond the most primitive animal life, but empaths read a different sort of band, one that covered a broader range than telepathy. Modra had insisted that there were intense pockets of emotion on a primal but very nasty level throughout this swamp. Alien life took many forms, and often did not have much in common with the ones they knew. Even thought, if there was any thought, could take unknown forms, although there tended to be a narrow set of bands for carbon-based life and another equally well-defined set for silicon-based, the only two higher forms of life known. But no telepath could tune into an intelligence as low level as a beehive; an empath, however, could read the hive's agitation and growing rage.
"Uh-oh," the Durquist commented sourly. "Prepare to be defecated upon by rotten fruit."
There was a sudden series of crackling noises high above, and then several small objects fell, caroming off one branch and another, bouncing off spongy moss, on their way to the bottom. The pretty flowering plants that lived on the carpet above bore fruit, and every once in a while that fruit would get too heavy and break off. They had measured the falling fruit from afar but had not been right under it before.
"Almost got me," the Durquist reported. "It isn't just one that lets loose. When a big one goes, it takes a lot more with it."
"You're telling me!" Hama exclaimed. "They're falling all around me! I -- by the Three Gods of Sumura! The water! The -- ackh!" The last wasn't just on the radio band but was a panicked telepathic burst so strong that all had the sense of confusion, fear, and outright horror in their heads before they even heard the words. Yet no pictures of what was attacking the telepath came through. Hama had lost control.
"Hama!" Lankur cried out. "Stay there! We're coming!"
There was a snapping and crackling on the line, and Hama's voice was broken and strained. "No! No! Stay back! Get out of the water! The water! It's -- "
"Hama!" screamed Modra Stryke.
Modra looked around and saw the water begin to move near her, as if it somehow had congealed into something alive. Damn it, it was alive, no longer frothy but suddenly gelatinous as if something were underneath. She didn't waste any time; she jumped for the nearest large trunk junction and attempted to climb to the branches, three or four meters above the water.
Behind her the water itself seemed to form into a giant waving column, like some sort of tentacle, and reached out for her. It was translucent, pulpy, yet it had definite structure and form, and -- my God -- it was huge!
It rose up as if to grab her, to pull her down and into the muck, and she instantly switched suit power to external. The tentacle swiped at her boot, there was a crackling of blue energy, and it recoiled. It tried again, and again, seeming to add whatever mass it needed from the water, and each time it got a shock and withdrew. After a number of times it hesitated, as if finally learning, but it continued to circle around her below. Somehow, although it didn't seem possible, the organism knew just where she was.
She took advantage of the pause to climb as high as she could, but at about eight meters up the trunks grew together and twisted, and she could go no higher.
She watched, aware that her helmet lamp was slightly dimmed even now, then drew the pistol attached by its cord to her suit, and when the thing tried again she fired straight at it. A beam of blue-white light went out and caught the top of the tentacle, bathing it in an eerie white-hot glow, and when the glow faded, the top meter of the thing was gone with it.
But there was no blood, no oozing of ichor, just an irregular mass at the end of the tentacle where the disintegration had ceased.
And, slowly, as she watched, the gelatinous mass drew more substance, apparently from the surrounding waters. She could see the tentacle bulge, then the injured top began to swell, and she watched as it reformed the tentacle she'd just blown off as if nothing had been done to it!
"Durquist! Tris! Kama! Where the hell are you?" she shouted, forgetting her tough-as-nails act and starting to panic a little.
There was a crackling and popping in the radio, but she heard the Durquist say, "I saw your shot! Hang . . . Coming ..."
There was a sudden horrible screech and squeal on the intercom that almost blew out her eardrums. She instantly tuned to another frequency, then another, not getting much improvement. The noise was far too loud to bear for more than a moment; she had to will the intercom off.
The sudden blessed silence made her relax for a second, and the thing in the water seemed to sense that and swelled up for another attack, By now there were several other shapes in the water, tentacles growing upward like the first. She barely missed getting grabbed and pulled down, then started sweeping, horizontal motions with the pistol, cutting off rather than disintegrating the tips. There was a lot of splashing as long, curling tendrils dropped into the water, but then her light showed her a sight that froze her blood.
The tendrils seemed to gather themselves up, then swim, snakelike, to the nearest large tentacle and merge with it, followed by the bulging and the stow rise to the top once again.
Son of a bitch! You can't kill these things! she thought to herself. If the little ones could do that, what was to stop the bigger ones from merging, growing into tentacles forty, fifty, even sixty meters high? Those suckers could reach the surface if they had to!
If, that was, they were smart enough to realize it.
She tried the radio again, but there were still the unbearable screeches and she quickly shut it back off. Somebody's suit, probably Hama's, was penetrated; energy was leaking out all over the place and the radio had been open when it happened. She couldn't keep it on, couldn't hope to get through that screech, but now the silence seemed at least equally awful and she suddenly felt very, very alone.
Now she knew why the old-timers wouldn't go out on an appraisal without a telepath.
She looked around in the gloom. The tentacles were holding off for the moment, as if massing for a new attack with more caution -- although they couldn't be killed, the gun obviously stung -- but she knew it was only a matter of time. She looked around, trying to figure out if she could somehow move, force the tentacles to chase her from down there. They didn't appear to be very bright, just single-minded, or they would have had her by now. The falling fruit had stirred them up, maybe even fed them, and they wouldn't go back to rest or whatever state they usually were in until they'd eaten everything in sight that might possibly be edible. They didn't seem to have muscles, but they sure as hell had some strength. If one got her head and the other her feet and they pulled and twisted in opposite directions, she'd be cracked like a nut.
Maybe that was what had happened to Hama. Taken by surprise, grabbed by several of these things, which twisted and broke his suit seals before he had known what was happening. The energy discharge would keep them away from his body for a while, which didn't help matters much since they were then free to slither over toward her. It was probable that he wasn't even good to eat.
Another volley, another repeat of the cutting off, the slithering together, the melding, the rising up and rebuilding. Why hadn't they attacked before? Why had they waited? And why hadn't Hama been able to detect them long before this? It didn't make any sense at all.
She wondered again if she should move -- and if she could. The Durquist was still high up in the trees and not under immediate attack; the creatures wouldn't know about him. Trouble was, the last message from the Durquist had reported seeing her shots, so that meant staying here or risk losing the only hope of short-term rescue. On the other hand, if the Durquist came down here, they'd go after him too. A Durquist had limited mobility in that suit, but couldn't breathe this shit any more than the rest of them could.
And what if it wasn't her shots the Durquist had seen? What if he'd seen the discharges from Hama's suit or maybe Tris firing?