"Murray Leinster - Keyhole (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Minutes later he went out through the air lock. He moved lightly despite the cumbrous suit
he wore. There were two other staff members with him. All three were armed and the searchlight
beam stabbed here and there erratically to expose any relative of Butch who might try to approach
them in the darkness.
With the light at his back Worden could see that trillions of stars looked down upon Luna.
The zenith was filled with infinitesimal specks of light of every conceivable color. The familiar
constellations burned ten times as brightly as on Earth. And Earth itself hung nearly overhead. It
was three-quarters full—a monstrous bluish giant in the sky, four times the Moon’s diameter, its
ice caps and continents mistily to be seen. -
Worden went forebodingly to the object left behind by Butch’s kin. He wasn’t much
surprised when he saw what it was. It was a rocking stone on its plate with a fine impalpable dust
on the plate, as if something had been crushed under the egg-shaped upper stone acting as a mill.
Worden said sourly into his helmet microphone, “It’s a present for Butch. His kinfolk know
he was captured alive. They suspect he’s hungry: They’ve left some grub for him of the kind he
wants or needs most.”
That was plainly what it was. It did not make Worden feel proud. A baby—Butch—had been
kidnapped by the enemies of its race. That baby was a prisoner and its captors would have nothing
with which to feed it. So someone, greatly daring—Worden wondered somberly if it was Butch’s
father and mother—had risked their lives to leave food for him with a rocking stone to tag it for
recognition as food.
“It’s a dirty shame,” said Worden bitterly. “All right! Let’s carry it back. Careful not
to spill the powdered stuff!”
His lack of pride was emphasized when Butch fell upon the unidentified powder with marked
enthusiasm. Tiny pinch by tiny pinch Butch consumed it with an air of vast satisfaction. Worden
felt ashamed.
“You’re getting treated pretty rough, Butch,” said Worden. “What I’ve already learned from
you will cost a good many hundred of your folks’ lives. And they’re taking chances to feed you!


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I’m making you a traitor and myself a scoundrel.” -

Butch thoughtfully held up the hoop diaphragm to catch the voice vibrations in the air. He
was small and furry and absorbed. He decided that he could pick up sounds better from the rock
underfoot. He pressed the communicator microphone on Worden. He waited.
“No!” said Worden roughly. “Your people are too human. Don’t let me find out any more,
Butch. Be smart and play dumb!”
But Butch didn’t, It wasn’t very long before Worden was teaching him to read. Oddly,
though, the rock microphones that had given the alarm at the station didn’t help the tractor
parties at all. Butch’s kinfolk seemed to vanish from the neighborhood of the station altogether.
Of course if that kept up, the construction of a fuel base could be begun and the actual
extermination of the species carried out later. But the reports on Butch were suggesting other
possibilities.
“If your folks stay vanished,” Worden told Butch, “it’ll be all right for a while—and only
for a while. I’m being urged to try to get you used to Earth gravity. If I succeed, they’ll want
you on Earth in a zoo. And if that works—why, they’ll be sending other expeditions to get more of
your kinfolk to put in other zoos.”
Butch watched Worden, motionless. “And also”—Worden’s tone was very grim—”there’s some