"Harry Harrison - Deathworld 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

For JOHN W. CAMPBELL without whose aid this book— and a good percentage of modern science fiction— would never have been written.



All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, WRAmvER is, is rUGHT.
—Aij~x~imim PoPE, “An Essay on Man”
1
“Just a moment,” Jason said into the phone, then turned away for a moment and shot an attacking homdevil. “No, I’m not doing anything important. I’ll come over now and maybe I can help.”
He switched off the phone and the radio operator’s image faded from the screen. When he passed the gutted horndevil it stirred with a last spark of vicious life, and its horn clattered on his flexible metal boot; he kicked the body off the wall into the jungle below.
It was dark in the perimeter guard turret; the only illumination came from the flickering lights of the defense screen controls. Meta looked up swiftly at him and smiled, then turned her full attention back to the alarm board.
“I’m going over to the spaceport radio tower,” Jason told her. “There is a spacer in orbit, trying to make contact in an unknown language. Maybe I can help.”
“Hurry back,” Meta said and, after a rapid check that all her alarms were in the green, she turned in the chair and reached up to him. Her arms held him, slim-muscled and as strong as a man’s, but her lips were warm, feminine. He returned the kiss, though she broke away as suddenly as she had begun, turning her attention back to the alarm and defense system.
“That’s the trouble with Pyrrus,” Jason said. “Too much efficiency.” He bent over and gave her a small bite on the nape of the neck and she laughed and slapped at him playfully without taking her eyes from the alarms. He moved—but not fast enough—and went out rubbing his bruised ear. “Lady weight-lifter!” he muttered under his breath.
The radio operator was alone in the spaceport tower, a teen-age boy who had never been offplanet, and therefore knew only Pyrran, while Jason, after his career as a professional gambler, spoke or had nodding acquaintance with most of the galactic languages.
“It’s orbiting out of range now,” the operator said. “Be back in a moment. Talks something different.” He turned the gain up, and above the crackle of atmospherics a voice slowly grew.
jeg kan ikke forsta°. . . Pyrrus, kan dig hШr mig. . .
“No trouble with that,” Jason said, reaching for the microphone. “It’s Nytdansk—they speak it on most of the planets in the Polaris area.” He thumbed the switch on.
“Pyrrus til ruin fartskib, over,” he said, and opened the switch. The answer came back in the same language.
“Request landing permission. What are your coordinates?”
“Permission denied, and the suggestion strongly presented that you find a healthier planet.”
“That is impossible, since I have a message for Jason dinAlt and I have information that he is here.”
Jason looked at the crackling loudspeaker with new interest. “Your information is correct: dinAlt speaking. What is the message?”
“It cannot be delivered over a public circuit. I am now following your radio beam down. Will you give me instructions?”
“You do realize that you are probably committing suicide? This is the deadliest planet in the galaxy, and all the life forms, from the bacteria up to the clawhawks—which are as big as the ship you’re flying— are inimical to man. There i~ a truce of sorts going now, but it is still certain death for an outworlder like you. Can you hear me?”
There was no answer. Jason shrugged and looked at the approach radar.
“Well, it’s your life. But don’t say with your dying breath that you weren’t warned. I’ll bring you in—but only if you agree to stay in your ship. I’ll come out to you; that way you have a fifty-fifty chance that the decontamination cycling in your spacelock will kill the local microscopic life.”
“That is agreeable,” came the answer, “since I have no wish to die
—only to deliver my message.”
Jason guided the ship in, watched it emerge from the low-lying clouds, hover, then drop stern first with a grating crash. The shock absorbers took up most of the blow, but the ship had bent a support and stood at a decided angle.
“Terrible landing,” the radio operator grunted, and turned back to his controls, uninterested in the stranger. Pyrrans have no casual curiosity.
Jason was the direct opposite. Curiosity had brought him to Pyrrus, involved him in the planet-wide war, and almost killed him. Now curiosity drove him towards the ship. He hesitated a moment as he realized that the radio operator had not understood his conversation with the strange pilot, and could not know that he planned to enter the ship. If he was walking into trouble he could expect no help.
“I can take care of myself,” he said to himself with a laugh, and when he raised his hand his gun leaped out of the power holster strapped to the inside of his wrist and slammed into his hand. His index finger was already contracted, and when the guardless trigger hit it a single shot banged out, blasting the distant dartweed he had aimed at.
He was good, and he knew it. He would never be as good as the native Pyrrans, born and raised on this deadly planet, with its doubled gravity, but he was faster and more deadly than any offworlder could possibly be. He could handle any trouble that might develop—and he expected trouble. In the past he had had many differences of opinion with the police and various other planetary authorities, though he could think of none of them who would bother to send police across interstellar space to arrest him.
Why had this ship come?
There was an identification number painted on the space/s stern, and a rather familiar heraldic device. Where had he seen that before?
His attention was distracted by the opening of the outer door of the airlock and he stepped inside. Once it had sealed behind him, he closed his eyes while the supersonics and ultraviolet of the decon cycle did their best to eliminate the various minor life forms that had come in on his clothes. They finally finished, and when the inner door began to open he pressed tight against it, ready to jump through as soon as it had opened wide enough. If there were any surprises he wanted them to be his.
When he went through the door he realized he was falling. His gun sprang into his hand and he had it half raised towards the man in the spacesuit who sat in the control chair.
“Gas . . .“ was all he managed to say, and he was out before he hit the metal deck.

Consciousness returned, accompanied by a thudding headache that made Jason wince when he moved, and when he opened his eyes the pain of the light made him screw them shut again. Whatever the drug was that had knocked him out, it was fast-working, and seemed to be oxidized just as quickly. The headache faded to a dull throb, and he could open his eyes without feeling that needles were being driven into them.
lie was seated in a standard space-chair that had been equipped with wrist and ankle locks, which were now well secured. A man sat in the chair next to him, intent on the spaceship’s controls; the ship was in flight and well into space. The stranger was working the computer, cutting a tape to control their flight in jump space.
Jason took the opportunity to study the man. He seemed to be a little old for a policeman, though on second thought it was really hard to be sure of his age. His hair was grey and cropped so short it was like a skullcap, but the wrinkles in his leathery skin seemed to have been caused more by exposure than by advanced years. Tall and firmly erect, he appeared underweight at first glance, until Jason realized this effect was caused by the total absence of any excess flesh. It was as though he had been cooked by the sun and leached by the rain until only bone, tendon, and muscle were left. When he moved his head the muscles stood out like cables under the skin of his neck and his hands at the controls were like the browned talons of some bird. A hard finger pressed the switch that activated the jump control, and he turned away from the board to face Jason.
“I see you are awake. It was a mild gas. I did not enjoy using it, but it was the safest way.”
When he talked his jaw opened and shut with the no-nonsense seriousness of a bank vault. His deepset, cold blue eyes stared fixedly from under thick dark brows. There was not the slightest element of humor in his expression or in his words.
“Not a very friendly thing to do,” Jason said, while he quietly tested the restraining bands. They were locked and tight. “If I had any idea that your important personal message was going to be a dose of knockout ga~ I might have thought twice about guiding you in for a landing.”