"Christopher, John - Tripods 03 - The Pool of Fire 2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher Barbara)

A scientist said, "It probably has something to do with automatic piloting." I wondered what that was. "The course is plotted-and if you override it you set up a new pattern which remains constant unless that is overridden in turn. I see the mechanism of it."

Which was more than I did. Talking about the why and wherefore did not strike me as important. The question was: how to get at the Tripod now?

Someone suggested digging another pitfall, across the new course. The remark fell into silence, which Julius broke.

"We could do that. But it does not pass within two miles of the shore, and the going in between is very bad. No road, not even a track. I think we should have them swarming around us before we had got our prisoner half the distance to the boat:"

The silence was resumed, and lengthened. After some seconds, Andre said, "I suppose we could call this operation off temporarily. We could find another track within reach of the sea, and work on that instead:"

Someone else said, "It took us four months to find this one. Finding another could take us as long, or longer:"

And every day counted: none of us needed telling that. Silence fell again. I tried to think of something, but discovered only a hopeless blank in my mind. There was a sharp wind, and a smell of snow in the air. Land and sea alike were black and desolate, under a lowering sky. It was Beanpole who spoke at last. He said, diffident in the presence of our elders, "It does not seem that the jamming last week made it suspicious. It would hardly have come so close again if so; or would have come closer yet, to investigate. The altered course is-well, more or less an accident:"

Andre nodded. "That seems to be true. Does it help?"

"If we could lure :t back onto the old course

. ."An excellent idea. The only problem is: how? What is there that will lure a Tripod? Do you know? Does anyone?"

Beanpole said, "I am thinking of something Will told me that Fritz and he witnessed."

He told them, briefly, the story I had told him about the Hunt. They listened, but when he had finished, one of the scientists said, "We know of this. It happens in other places, as well. But it's a tradition, and caused as much by the Capped as by the Tripods. Do you suggest we start a tradition during the next nine days?"

Beanpole started to say something, which was interrupted. All our nerves were frayed; tempers likely to be short. Julius, though, cut across the interruption, "Go on, Jean-Paul."

He sometimes stammered a little when he was nervous, and did so now. But the impediment disappeared as he warmed up to what he was saying.

"I was thinking . . . we know they are curious about strange things. When Will and I were floating downriver on a raft . . . one of them veered off course and smashed the raft with its tentacle. If someone could attract this one's attention, and perhaps lead it into the trap . . . I think it might work."

It might, at that. Andre objected. "To attract attention, and then stay out of its clutches long enough to bring it to us . . . it sounds like a tall order."

"On foot," Beanpole said, "it would be impossible. But, in the Hunt that Will and Fritz saw, the men were on horseback. One lasted for quite a long time, covering a distance as great as the one we want or more, before he was caught."

There was a pause again, as we considered what he had said. Julius said thoughtfully, "It might work. But can we be quite sure he will rise to the bait? As you say, they are curious about strange things. A man on horseback . . . They see them every day by the score:"

"If the man were dressed in something bright -and perhaps the horse painted . . ."

"Green," Fritz said. "It is their own color, after all. A green man on a green horse. I think that would attract attention, all right."

There was a murmur of approval of the idea. Julius said, "I like that. Yes, it could do. All we need now is our horse and rider."

I felt excitement rise in me. They were mostly scientists, unused to such humdrum physical pursuits as horse riding. The two with the obviously best claim were Fritz and I. And Crest and I had grown used to and skilled in understanding one another through a long year's journeying.

I said, catching Julius's eye, "Sir, if I might suggest . . :"

We used a green dye on Crest, which would wash off afterward. He took the indignity well, with only a snort or two of disgust. The color was bright emerald, and looked startling. I wore a jacket and trousers of the same eye-wrenching hue. I objected when Beanpole approached my face with a rag dipped in the die but, on Julius's confirmation, submitted, Fritz, looking on, burst into laughter. He was not much given to mirthfulness, but then, I suppose, he was not often treated to so comic a spectacle.

During the previous nine days I had rehearsed and re-rehearsed my part in this morning's events. I was to pick up the Tripod as it came around the hill and, as soon as it made a move in my direction, gallop at full speed for the pitfall. We had fixed a narrow causeway over the top, which we hoped would take Crest's weight and mine, and marked it with signs which were meant to be conspicuous enough for me to see and yet unlikely to attract suspicion on the part of the Masters in the Tripod. The latter had seemed the greater risk, so we had erred on the side of caution. It was a tenuous and ill-defined path I had to follow, and three or four times we had found ourselves off course and only saved by a last-minute swerve from plunging into the pit below.