"Murray Leinster - The Mutant Weapon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

At two miles he used the rockets for deceleration. The pencil-thin flame reached down for an
incredible distance. By naked-eye observation out a port, he tilted the fiercely roaring, swiftly
falling ship until hillsides and forests underneath him ceased to move. By that time he was very
low indeed.
He reached ground on a mountainside which was lighted by the blue-white flame of the rocket blast.
He chose an area in which the treetops were almost flat, indicating something like a plateau
underneath. Murgatroyd was practically frantic by this time because of his capture and the
pinching of his tail, but Calhoun could not spare time to release him. He let the ship down
gently, gently, trying to descend in an absolutely vertical line.
If he didn't do it perfectly, he came very close. The ship settled into what was practically a
burned-away runnel among monstrous trees. The slender, high-velocity flame did not splash when it


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reached ground. It penetrated. It burned a hole for itself through humus and clay and bedrock.
When the ship touched and settled, there was boiling molten stone some sixty feet underground; but
there was only a small scratching sound as it came to rest. A flame-amputated tree limb rubbed
tentatively against the hull.
Calhoun turned off the rockets. The ship swayed slightly
and there were crunching noises. Then it was still on its landing fins.
"Now," said Calhoun, "I can take care of you, Murgatroyd."
He flicked on the switches of the exterior microphones,
which were much more sensitive than human ears. The
radiation detectors were still in action. They reported only
the cracklings of the distant storm.
But the microphones brought in the moaning of wind over nearby mountaintops, and the almost
deafening susurrus of rustling leaves. Underneath these noises there was a bedlam of other natural
sounds. There were chirpings and hootings and squeaks, and the gruntings made by native animal
life. These sounds had a singularly peaceful quality. When Calhoun toned them down to be no more
than background noise, they suggested the sort of concert of night-creatures which to men has
always seemed an indication of purest tran-quility.
Presently Calhoun looked at the pictures the photorecorder had taken while the telescope's field
swept over the city. It was the colony-city reported to have been begun two years before, to
receive colonists from Dettra Two. It was the city of the landing-grid which had tried to destroy
the Med Ship as a dog kills a rat, by shaking it to fragments, some forty thousand miles in space.
It was the city which had made Calhoun land with his vision plates blinded; which had made him
pretend his ship was internally a wreck; which had drained his power reserves of some hundreds of
millions of kilowatt-hours of energy. It was the city which had made his return to Med
Headquarters impossible.
He inspected the telescopic pictures. They were very clear. They showed the city with astonishing
detail. There was a lacy pattern of highways, with their medallions of multiple-dwelling units.
There were the lavish park areas between the buildings of this planetary capital. There was the
landing grid itself, a half-mile high structure of steel girders, a full mile in diameter.
But there were no vehicles on the highways. There were no specks on the overpasses to indicate
people on foot. There
were no 'copters on the building roofs, nor were there objects in mid-air to tell of air traffic.
The city was either deserted or it had never been occupied. But it was absolutely intact. The
structures were perfect. There was no indication of past panic or disaster, and even the highways