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

pick one-but I intrude upon your field, doctor."


The two of them exchanged bows. The doctor took up the talk speaking
briskly and entirely to Eldridge.
"A joint meeting of those of us best suited to consider the situation
recommended that we pick up one specimen for intensive observation. For
reasons of availability, you were the one chosen. Following your return
under drugs to this planet, you were thoroughly examined, by the best of
medical techniques, both mentally and physically. I will not go into detail,
since we have no wish to depress you unduly. I merely want to impress on
you the fact that we found nothing. Nothing. No unusual power or ability
of any sort, such as history shows you to have had and legend hints at. I
mention this because of the further course of action we have decided to
take. Commander?"
The being behind the desk got to his hind feet. The other two rose.
"You will come with us," said the commander.
Herded by them, Eldridge went out through the room's door into
brilliant sunlight and across a small stretch of something like concrete to a
stubby egg-shaped craft with ridiculous little wings.
"Inside," said the commander. They got in. The commander squatted
before a bank of instruments, manipulated a simple sticklike control, and
after a moment the ship took to the air. They flew for perhaps half an
hour, with Eldridge wishing he was in a position to see out one of the high
windows, then landed at a field apparently literally hacked out of a small
forest of mountains.
Crossing this field on foot, Eldridge got a glimpse of some truly huge
ships, as well as a number of smaller ones such as the one in which he had
arrived. Numbers of the furry aliens moved about, none with any great air
of hurry, but all with purposefulness. There was a sudden, single,
thunderous sound that was gone almost before the ear could register it;
and Eldridge, who had ducked instinctively, looked up again to see one of
the huge ships falling--there is no other word for it--skyward with such
unbelievable rapidity it was out of sight in seconds.
The four of them came at last to a shallow, open trench in the stuff
which made the field surface. It was less than a foot wide and they stepped
across it with ease. But once they had crossed it, Eldridge noticed a
difference. In the five hundred yard square enclosed by the trench-for it
turned at right angles off to his right and to his left--there was an air of
tightly-established desertedness, as of some highly restricted area, and the
rectangular concrete-looking building that occupied the square's very
center glittered unoccupied in the clear light.
They marched to the door of this building and it opened without any of
them touching it. Inside was perhaps twenty feet of floor, stretching
inward as a rim inside the walls. Then a sort of moat--Eldridge could not
see its depth--filled with a dark fluid with a faint, sharp odor. This was
perhaps another twenty feet wide and enclosed a small, flat island perhaps
fifteen feet by fifteen feet, almost wholly taken up by a cage whose walls
and ceiling appeared to be made of metal bars as thick as a man's thumb
and spaced about six inches apart. Two more of the aliens, wearing a sort