"Down in Flames" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

brighter than a chimpanzee. Something else is training these.
They talk endlessly. Shaeffer mentions the trip to Swoosh (Flatlander).
Truesdale knows a good deal about the Outsiders, and shows it. Shaeffer
wonders about some of the questions he asked the Outsiders during that
single meeting. When he mentions one question (``What will you do now that
you know the Core is exploding?''), Truesdale hops up yelling, ``That's
it!''
The attack starts in that instant.

V

It catches them on the surface. In the first moments Camelot's gravity
field goes and the air starts to expand into space. Truesdale is vaporized
in the middle of a leap across a gap between the segments of Camelot.
Shaeffer dives for a door. Any door: the nearest, despite warning
signs. There's air. Shaeffer inhales once in relief, once in glorious
disbelief, once to find out where the incredibly delicious smell is coming
from. Then his mind turns off, and he's tracking the tree-of-life root
down through the corridors of Camelot's heart.

VI

Shaeffer wakes as a protector stage human, very like Truesdale: knobby
joints, no obvious sex, expanded brain-case, skin thickened to leather
armor, etc.
Escape is his first problem. There's no ship; there's not much left of
Camelot. If the aliens were searching Camelot with a device to detect
thinking minds, then Shaeffer's dormancy saved him. But they may still be
around.
There are gravity generators. Shaeffer repairs them, then lines them up
to accelerate rocks at near-lightspeed. Now he's got a reaction drive. He
heads for the sun.
The enemy attacks as his makeshift ship drops toward the solar system.
Shaeffer's gravity generators throw rocks at them. He follows with a
sphere of neutronium in stasis.
The Pluto Watch picks him up. Shortly he sets himself to locating and
using Truesdale's organization on Earth . . . and to solving an urgent
problem: the Grogs.

VII

Why didn't Truesdale exterminate the Grogs? Why wasn't it his second
act? His first, of course, was to review the Kzinti problem and pronounce
them harmless. The Grogs look dangerous. They're sessile, granted. They
talk a good surrender. But they're hypnotic telepaths, and they bid fair
to be descendants of the terrible Slavers! Except they're the wrong sex.
How in hell did that happen?
Right, this must have been what Truesdale was investigating. Shaeffer
will retrace his steps.