"Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson - Dune- Nighttime Shadows on Open Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

"What are we going to do with it?" Josten asked.

Once, early in his assignment on Arrakis, Kiel had joined Rabban on an
abortive worm hunt. They had taken a Fremen guide, well-armed
troops, even a Planetologist. Using the Fremen guide as bait, they had
lured one of the enormous sandworms and killed it with explosives. But
before Rabban could take his trophy, the beast had dissolved, sloughing
into amoeba creatures that fell to the sand, leaving nothing but a
cartilaginous skeleton and loose crystal teeth. Rabban had been furious.

Kiel's stomach knotted. The Baron's nephew might consider it an insult
that three simple patrolmen could capture a worm, when he'd been
unable to do so himself. "We'd better drown it."

"Drown it?" Josten said. "What for? And why would I want to waste
my water ration to do that?"

Garan stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt. "I've heard the Fremen do
it. If you drown a baby worm, they say it spits out some kind of drug or
poison. It's very rare."

Kiel nodded. "Oh, yeah. The desert people use it in their religious
rituals. It makes everybody go crazy, wild orgies and everything."

"But ... we've only got two literjons of water in the compartment,"
Josten said, still nervous.

"Then we only use one. I know where we can refill it, anyway." The
pilot and his sidegunner exchanged glances. They had patrolled
together long enough that they'd both thought of the same thing.

As if understanding its fate, the worm bucked and thrashed even more,
but it was already growing weaker.

"Once we get the drug," Kiel said, "let's have some fun."




· · · · ·


At night, with the patrol 'thopter running in stealth mode, they flew
over the razor-edged mountains, approaching from behind a ridge and
landing on a rough mesa above the squalid village of Bilar Camp. The
villagers lived in hollowed-out caves and aboveground structures that
extended out to the flats. Windmills generated power; supply bins
glittered with tiny lights that attracted a few moths and the bats that fed
on them.