"Gordon R. Dickson - Danger-Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

curtain of the barrier that ringed his building, to the landing field. After a
while one of the large ships landed and when he saw the three members of
its crew disembark from it and move, antlike off across the field toward
the buildings at its far end, he smiled again.
He settled back and closed his eyes. He seemed to doze for a couple of
hours and then the sound of the door opening to admit the extra single
guard bearing the food for his three o'clock mid-afternoon feeding. He sat
up, pushed the cot down a ways, and sat on the end of it, waiting for the
meal.
The bridge was not extended-that happened only when someone
physically was to enter his cage. The monitor screen lit up and a woolly
face watched as the tray of food was loaded on the mechanical arm. It
swung out across the acid-filled moat, stretched itself toward the cage,
and under the vigilance of the face in the monitor, the two-foot square
hatch opened just before it to let it extend into the cage.
Smiling, Eldridge took the tray. The arm withdrew, as it cleared the
cage, the hatch swung shut and locked. Outside the cage, guards, food
carrier and face in the monitor relaxed. The food carrier turned toward
the door, the face in the monitor looked down at some invisible control
board before it and the outer door swung open.
In that moment, Eldridge moved.
In one swift second he was on his feet and his hands had closed around
the bars of the hatch. There was a single screech of metal,
as—incredibly--he tore it loose and threw it aside. Then he was diving
through the hatch opening.
He rolled head over heels like a gymnast and came up with his feet
standing on the inner edge of the moat. The acrid scent of the acid faintly
burnt at his nostrils. He sprang forward in a standing jump, arms
outstretched--and his clutching fingers closed on the end of the food arm,
now halfway in the process of its leisurely mechanical retraction across the
moat.
The metal creaked and bent, dipping downward toward the acid, but
Eldridge was already swinging onward under the powerful impetus of his
arms from which the sleeves had fallen back to reveal bulging ropes of
smooth, powerful muscle. He flew forward through the air, feet first, and
his boots took the nearest guard in the face, so that they crashed to the
ground together.
For a second they rolled entangled, then the guard flopped and Eldridge
came up on one knee, holding the black tube of the guard's weapon. It spat
a single tongue of flame and the other guard dropped. Eldridge thrust to
his feet, turning to the still-open door.
The door was closing. But the panicked food-carrier, unarmed, had
turned to run. A bolt from Eldridge's weapon took him in the back. He fell
forward and the door jammed on his body. Leaping after him, Eldridge
squeezed through the remaining opening.
Then he was out under the free sky. The sounds of alarm screechers
were splitting the air. He began to run--
The doctor was already drugged--but not so badly that he could not
make it to the field when the news came. Driven by a strange perversity of
spirit, he went first to the prison to inspect the broken hatch and the bent