"Murray Leinster - Exploration Team" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

But this colony was planned with full knowledge of what robots can and can’t
do. As ‘ground was cleared, it was enclosed in an electric fence which no
sphex could touch without frying.”
Huyghens thoughtfully cut his food. After a moment:
‘The landing was in the wintertime,” he observed. “It must have been,
because the colony survived a while. And at a guess, the last shiplanding was
before thaw. The years are eighteen months long here, you know.”
Roane admitted:
“It was in winter that the landing was made. And the last ship-landing
was before spring. The idea was to get mines in operation for material, and to
have ground cleared and enclosed in sphex-proof fence before the sphexes came
back from the tropics. They winter there, I understand.”
“Did you ever see a sphex?” Huyghens asked. Then added, “No, of course
not. But if you took a spitting cobra and crossed it with a wildcat, painted
it tan-and-blue and then gave it hydrophobia and homicidal mania at once—why
you might have one sphex. But not the race of sphexes. They can climb trees,
by the way. A fence wouldn’t stop them.”
“An electrified fence,” said Roane. “Nothing could climb that!”
“No one animal,” Huyghens told him. “But sphexes are a race. The smell
of one dead sphex brings others running with blood in their eyes. Leave a dead
sphex alone for six hours and you’ve got them around by the dozen. Two days
and there are hundreds. Longer, and you’ve got thousands of them! They gather
to caterwaul over their dead pal and hunt for whoever or whatever killed him.”
He returned to his meal. A moment later he said:
“No need to wonder what happened to your colony. During the winter the
robots burned out a clearing and put up an electrified fence according to the
book. Come spring, the sphexes came back. They’re curious, among their other
madnesses. A sphex would try to climb the fence just to see what was behind
it. He’d be electrocuted. His carcass would bring others, raging because a
sphex was dead. Some of them would try to climb the fence—and die. And their
corpses would bring others. Presently the fence would break down from the
bodies hanging on it, or a bridge of dead beasts’ carcasses would be built
across it—and from as far downwind as the scent carried there’d be loping,
raging,
scent-crazed sphexes racing to the spot. They’d pour into the clearing through
or over the fence, squalling and screeching for something to kill. I think
they’d find it.”
Roane ceased to eat. He looked sick.
“There were. . . pictures of sphexes in the data I read. I suppose that
would account for.. . everything.”
He tried to lift his fork. He put it down again.
“I can’t eat,” he said abruptly.
Huyghens made no comment. He finished his own meal, scowling. He rose
and put the plates into the top of the cleaner. There was a whirring. He took
them out of the bottom and put them away.
“Let me see those reports, eh?” he asked dourly. “I’d like to see what
sort of a set-up they had—those robots.”

Roane hesitated and then opened his traveling bag. There was a
microviewer and reels of films. One entire reel was labeled “Specifications