"Henry Kuttner - Clash by Night (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

'Nobody does, unless they have to. Keep your eyes open and your gun ready. Don't wade through water, even when you can see bottom. There are some little devils that are pretty nearly transparent - vampire fish. If a few of those fasten on you, you'll need a transfusion in less than a minute. I wish the volcanoes would kick up a racket. The beasties generally lie low when that happens.'
Under a tree Scott stopped, seeking a straight, long limb. It took a while to find a suitable one, in that tangle of coiling lianas, but finally he succeeded, using his smatchet blade to hack himself a light five-foot pole. Kane at his heels, he moved on into the gathering gloom.
'We may be stalked,' he told the boy. 'Don't forget to guard the rear.'
The sand had given place to sticky whitish mud that plastered the men to their calves before a few moments had passed. A patina of slickness seemed to overlay the ground. The grass was coloured so much like the mud itself that it was practically invisible, except by its added slipperiness. Scott slowly advanced, keeping close to the wall of rock on his left where the tangle was not so thick. Nevertheless he had to use the smatchet more than once to cut a passage through vines.
He stopped, raising his hand, and the squelch of Kane's feet in the mud paused. Silently Scott pointed. Ahead of them in the cliff base was the mouth of a burrow.
The captain bent down, found a small stone, and threw it toward the den. He waited, one hand lightly on his gun, ready to see something flash out of that burrow and race toward them. In the utter silence a new sound made itself heard- tiny goblin drums, erratic and resonant in a faraway fashion. Water, dropping from leaf to leaf, in the soaked jungle ceiling above them. Tink, link, tink-tink, link, tink-tink-
'O.K.,' Scott said quietly. 'Watch it, though.' He went
on, gun drawn, till they were level with the mouth of the burrow. 'Turn, Kane. Keep your eye on it till I tell you to stop.' He gripped the boy's arm and guided him, bolstering his own weapon. The pole, till now held between biceps and body, slipped into his hand. He used it to probe the slick surface of the mud ahead. Sinkholes and quicksands were frequent, and so were traps, camouflaged pits built by mud-wolves - which, of course, were not wolves, and belonged to no known genus. On Venus, the fauna had more subdivisions than on old Earth, and lines of demarcation were more subtle.
'All right now.'
Kane, sighing with relief, turned his face forward again. 'What was it?'
'You never know what may come out of those holes,' Scott told him. 'They come fast, and they're usually poisonous. So you can't take chances with the critters. Slow down here. I don't like the looks of that patch ahead.'
Clearings were unusual in the forest. There was one here, twenty feet wide, slightly saucer-shaped. Scott gingerly extended the pole and probed. A faint ripple shook the white mud, and almost before it had appeared the captain had unholstered his pistol and was blasting shot after shot at the movement.
'Shoot, Kane!' he snapped. 'Quick! Shoot at it!'
Kane obeyed, though he had to guess at his target. Mud geysered up, suddenly crimson-stained. Scott, still firing, gripped the boy's arm and ran him back at a breakneck pace.
The echoes died. Once more the distant elfin drums whispered through the green gloom.
'We got it,' Scott said, after a pause.
'We did?' the other asked blankly. 'What-'
'Mud-wolf, I think. The only way to kill those things is to get 'em before they get out of the mud. They're fast and they die hard. However-' He warily went forward. There was nothing to see. The mud had collapsed into a deeper
saucer, but the holes blasted by the high-x bullets had filled in. Here and there were traces of thready crimson.
'Never a dull moment,' Scott remarked. His crooked grin eased the tension. Kane chuckled and followed the captain's example in replacing his half-used clip with a full one.
The narrow spine of Signal Rock extended inland for a quarter mile before it became scalable. They reached that point finally, helping each other climb, and finding1 themselves, at the summit, still well below the leafy ceiling of the trees. The black surface of the rock was painfully hot, stinging their palms as they climbed, and even striking through their shoe soles.
'Halfway point, captain?'
'Yeah. But don't let that cheer you. It doesn't get any better till we hit the beach again. We'll probably need some fever shots when we reach the fort, just in case. Oh-oh, Mask, Kane, quick.' Scott lifted his arm. On his wrist the band of litmus had turned blue.
With trained accuracy they donned the respirators. Scott felt a faint stinging on his exposed skin, but that wasn't serious. Still, it would be painful later. He beckoned to Kane, slid down the face of the rock, used the pole to test the mud below, and jumped lightly. He dropped in the sticky whiteness and rolled over hastily, plastering himself from head to foot. Kane did the same. Mud wouldn't neutralize the poison flowers' gas, but it would absorb most of it before it reached the skin.
Scott headed toward the beach, a grotesque figure. Mud dripped on the eye plate, and he scrubbed it away with a handful of white grass. He used the pole constantly to test the footing ahead.
Nevertheless the mud betrayed him. The pole broke through suddenly, and as Scott automatically threw his weight back, the ground fell away under his feet. He had time for a crazy feeling of relief that this was quicksand, not a mud-wolf's den, and then the clinging, treacherous stuff had sucked him down knee-deep. He fell back, keeping his
grip on the pole and swinging the other end in an arc toward Kane.
The boy seized it in both hands and threw himself flat. His foot hooked over an exposed root. Scott, craning his neck at a painfully awkward angle and trying to see through the mud-smeared vision plates, kept a rat-trap grip on his end of the pole, hoping its slickness would not slip through his fingers.
He was drawn down farther, and then Kane's anchorage began to help. The boy tried to pull the pole toward him, hand over hand. Scott shook his head. He was a good deal stronger than Kane, and the latter would need all his strength to keep a tight grip on the pole.
Something stirred in the shadows behind Kane. Scott instinctively let go with one hand, and, with the other, got out his gun. It had a sealed mechanism, so the mud hadn't harmed the firing, and the muzzle had a one-way trap. He fired at the movement behind Kane, heard a muffled tumult, and waited till it had died. The boy, after a startled look behind him, had not stirred.
After that, rescue was comparatively easy. Scott simply climbed along the pole, spreading his weight over the surface of the quicksand. The really tough part was pulling his legs free of that deadly grip. Scott had to rest for five minutes after that.
But he got out. That was the important thing.
Kane pointed inquiringly into the bushes where the creature had been shot, but Scott shook his head. The nature of the beast wasn't a question worth deciding, as long as it was apparently hors de combat. Readjusting his mask, Scott turned toward the beach, circling the quicksand, and Kane kept at his heels.
Their luck had changed. They reached the shore with no further difficulty and collapsed on the black sand to rest. Presently Scott used a litmus, saw that the gas had dissipated, and removed his mask. He took a deep breath.
'Thanks, Kane,' he said. 'You can take a dip now if you
want to wash off that mud. But stay close inshore. No, don't strip. There's no time.'
The mud clung like glue and the black sand scratched like pumice. Still, Scott felt a good deal cleaner after a few minutes in the surf, while Kane stayed on guard. Slightly refreshed, they resumed the march.
An hour later a convoy plane, testing, sighted them, telaudioed the fort, and a flitterboat came racing out'to pick them up. What Scott appreciated most of all was the stiff shot of uisqueplus the pilot gave him.
Yeah. It was a dog's life, all right!
He passed the flask to Kane.
Presently the fort loomed ahead, guarding Doone harbour. Large as the landlocked bay was, it could scarcely accommodate the fleet. Scott watched the activity visible with an approving eye. The flitterboat rounded the sea wall, built for protection against tidal waves, and shot toward a jetty. Its almost inaudible motor died: the shell swung back.
Scott got out, beckoning to an orderly.
'Yes, sir?'
'See that this soldier gets what he needs. We've been in the jungle.'
The man didn't whistle sympathetically, but his mouth pursed. He saluted and helped Kane climb out of the flitterboat. As Scott hurried along the quay, he could hear an outburst of friendly profanity from the men on the dock, gathering around Kane.
He nodded imperceptibly. The boy would make a good Free Companion - always granted that he could stand the gaff under fire. That was the acid test. Discipline was tightened then to the snapping point. If it snapped - well, the human factor always remained a variable, in spite of all the psychologists could do.
He went directly to his quarters, switching on the telaudio to call Cine Rhys. The cinc's seamed, leathery face resolved itself on the screen.
'Captain Scott reporting for duty, sir.'
Rhys looked at him sharply. 'What happened?'
'Flitterboat crack-up. Had to make it in here on foot.'