"(ss) Return Engagement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

The air around him was almost as thick as that of Earth, and there had been a fountain of water. It fitted no picture of Mars, as these voices fitted no people he had expected to find

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on the harshness of the little world. Suspicion grew in his mind suddenly.

'You never came from this planet, Porreos!'

This time, the wailing chant began before the prince could answer. It was a thing of beauty and tradition, but the ache in it was like the ache of a man who would reach for the stars to melt them against the palm of his hand, and then look to find them gone. There was a laughter to it like the laughter that there would be because of the aching he felt too strong inside his breast for anything else.

Shawn learned more from the song behind the words than from the answer that Porreos made. No, they had never developed on Mars, but far away. They had been an old race ten million years before. But on their world there had been another race, stronger, younger, with all that they lacked. And for a time, the two had touched falteringly, to the benefit of both. But then had come a great change over the younger race.

Something that the old ones could not understand had taken over the whole emotions of the new ones. It had built a sudden hatred.

The race that had sometimes feared and sometimes loved the race of Porreos was deliberately filled with superstition and belief that all other creatures were things of ultimate evil, to be shunned, hated and mistreated. And the old race had been unable to withstand it. They had never been strong. They had dwelt on only a part of the home planet at any time. But now, finally, they were forced to flee.

Mars was the best they could find.

They had carved dwellings out under the surface and trapped what little air and water there was. It was a poor home to them, but all they had.

And now they were dying, slowly and gently. They each lived for a long time, but they bred infrequently to make up for it. And there was no longer the heart in them to keep up their numbers. All of the race that was left were here, behind the curtain.

'All,' Porreos repeated as the song came to its end like the sound of the last leaf falling in the forest of winter. 'It is a respect we owe you, at least, for disturbing you.'

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'But you'll disturb children, Porreos? You don't mind stealing them and bringing them here ?'

'Don't condemn us without understanding,' the voice said, and there was dignity and hurt in it. 'We're a lonely people. We need others, and even a single child whom we can adopt and make into one of us helps. And besides, there's another need which doesn't concern you.'

And there, Shawn realized, must lie the real crux of the matter. There was some need. There had to be, to send the shells across space looking for someone from Earth. 'Maybe it does,' he decided slowly. 'You've brought me here. The reason should concern me as much as it would concern a child.'

'No!'

Shawn waited patiently, as an adult might put pressure on a baulky child. He heard the same pressure mount behind the screen, with a rising tempo of rustlings and subdued whispers in the tantalizingly familiar alien tongue.

'Don't ask us that, Danny!' It was almost a roar of pain from the prince. 'A child we can adopt and make one of us and be bound to. But it is not for you to ask! We're an old, proud people, and our traditions are stronger than the laws of nature you Earthlings fight. We cannot ask favours outside our own. We cannot beg - not even for a part of the world that was our own. And we shall not beg of you!'

It was a nightmare experience. Logic was in abeyance, as if some part of him had already recognized that normal logic could not be used. But it was no more a nightmare than his own culture had become to him in the last few years. Beside that ugliness, this unreason was almost childishly simple.

'You're not begging,' he told the group behind the curtain. 'I'm giving. Tell me what you want of me and take it.'

There was a shock of silence, and a whisper that was not in the voice of the prince. 'You trust us that much?'

To his own surprise, he did. Somewhere his mind was making a pattern out of all this, and he was not afraid of them.

'As a free gift, then,' Porreos said at last, and some of the fatigue seemed to lift from the voice. 'We have one who is

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