"Frank Herbert - Seed Stock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Darkness fell, and with a furious clatter, the falcons flew off toward the sea. One of Kroudar's men
kindled a torch and, having rested, anxious now to climb the bluff and join their families, the fishermen
pitched into the work that must be done. Boats were hauled up on rollers.Trodi were spread out in thin
layers along racks within the storage huts. Nets were draped on racks to dry.

As he worked, Kroudar wondered about the scientists up there in the shining laboratories. He had the
working man's awe of knowledge, a servility in the face of titles and things clearly superior, but he had
also the simple man's sure awareness of when superior things failed.

Kroudar was not privy to the high-level conferences in the colony command, but he knew the physical
substance of the ideas discussed there. His awareness of failure and hovering disaster had no
sophisticated words or erudition to hold itself dancingly before men's minds, but his knowledge carried its
own elegance. He drew on ancient knowledge adjusted subtly to the differences ofthis place. Kroudar
had found thetrodi. Kroudar had organized the methods of capturing them and preserving them. He had
no refined labels to explain it, but Kroudar knew himself for what he could do and what he was.

He was the first sea peasanthere.

Without wasting energy on talk, Kroudar's band finished the work, turned away from the storage huts
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and plodded up the cliff trail, their course marked by, here and there, men with flaming torches. There
were fuzzy orange lights, heavy shadows, inching their way upward in a black world, and they gave heart
to Kroudar.

Lingering to the last, he checked the doors of the huts, then followed, hurrying to catch up. The man
directly ahead of him on the path carried a torch, native wood soaked introdi oil. It flickered and
smoked and gave off poisonous fumes. The light revealed a troglodyte figure, a human clad in patched
shipcloth, body too thin, muscles moving on the edge of collapse.

Kroudar sighed.

It was not like this on Mother Earth, he knew. There, the women waited on the strand for then' men to
return from the sea. Children played among the pebbles. Eager hands helped with the work onshore,
spreading the nets, carrying the catch, pulling the boats.

Nothere.

And the perilshere were not the perils of Home. Kroudar's boats never strayed out of sight of these
cliffs. One boat always carried a technician with a radio for contact with shore. Before its final descent,
the colony ship had seeded space with orbiting devices-watchers, guardians against surprises from the
weather. The laboriously built fishing fleet always had ample warning of storms. No monster sea
creatures had ever been seen in that ocean.

This placelacked the cruel savagery and variety of seas Kroudar had known, but it was nonetheless
deadly. Heknew this.