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

feigned to attack it.
His mother whacked him soundly.


II

There were comfortable, settling-down noises below. The bears grunted
and rumbled, but ultimately were still. The glare from the landing field was
gone. The lighted lane through the jungle was dark again. Huyghens ushered the
man from the space boat up into his living quarters. There was a rustling
stir, and Semper took his head from under his wing. He stared coldly at the
two humans. He spread monstrous, sevenfoot wings and fluttered them. He opened
his beak and closed it with a snap.
“That’s Semper,” said Huyghens. “Semper Tyrannis. He’s the rest of the
terrestrial population here. Not being a fly-by-night sort of creature, he
didn’t come out to welcome you.”
Roane blinked at the huge bird, perched on a three-inch-thick perch set
in the wall.
“An eagle?” he demanded. “Kodiak bears—mutated ones you say, but still
bears—and now an eagle? You’ve a very nice fighting unit in the bears.”
“They’re pack animals, too,” said Huyghens. “They can carry some
hundreds of pounds without losing too much combat efficiency. And there’s no
problem of supply. They live off the jungle. Not sphexes, though. Nothing will
eat a sphex, even if it can kill one.”
He brought Out glasses and a bottle. He indicated a chair. Roane put
down his traveling bag. He took a glass.
“I’m curious,” he observed. “Why Semper Tyrannis? I can understand Sitka
Pete and Sourdough Charley as names. The home of their ancestors makes them
fitting. But why Semper?”
“He was bred for hawking,” said Huyghens. “You sic a dog on something.
You sic Semper Tyrannis. He’s too big to ride on a hawking glove, so the
shoulders of my coats are padded to let him ride there. He’s a flying scout.
I’ve trained him to notify us of sphexes, and in flight he carries a tiny
television camera. He’s useful, but he hasn’t the brains of the bears.”
Roane sat down and sipped at his glass.
“Interesting . . . very interesting! But this is an illegal settlement.
I’m a Colonial Survey officer. My job is reporting on progress according to
plan, but nevertheless I have to arrest you. Didn’t you say something about
shooting me?”
Huyghens said doggedly:
“I’m trying to think of a way out. Add up all the penalties for illegal
colonization and I’d be in a very bad fix if you got away and reported this
set-up. Shooting you would be logical.”
“I see that,” said Roane reasonably. “But since the point has come up—I
have a blaster trained on you from my pocket.”
Huyghens shrugged.
“It’s rather likely that my human confederates will be back here before
your friends. You’d be in a very tight fix if my friends came back and found
you more or less sitting on my corpse.”
Roane nodded.