"Larry NIven - The Legacy of Heorot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

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Thou must now look to the needs of the nation;
Here dwell I no longer for Destiny calleth me!
Bid thou my warriors after my funeral pyre
Build me a burial-cairn high on the sea-cliff's head;
So that the wayfarers Beowulf's Barrow
Henceforth shall name it.

Thou art the last of all the kindred of Wagmund!
Wyrd has swept all my kin all the brave chiefs away!
Now I must follow them!

Beowulf, King of the Geats

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The Legacy of Heorot
Chapter 1

CAMELOT

They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the nuts work loose.
KIPLING, "The Sons of Martha"

"Cadzie! Wait up!"
Cadmann Weyland chuckled to himself and dug his heels into the slope, slowing his descent.
He politely busied himself, adjusting the rangefinder on his camera. After months on Avalon he
still found the shadows too sharp and the sunlight too blue, subtle things, noticed only when he
used familiar equipment like the camera.
The Colony sprang into high relief, and the recorder in his backpack vibrated noiselessly to
make a holotape recording of the network of buildings and plowed fields and animal pens that
stretched out in the valley below. The Colony was ten kilometers farther on, but the
electronically enhanced lenses brought its low buildings close enough to touch.
The image jolted as Sylvia slid into him. She caught herself with a palm against his back.
"Ouch. Sorry."
"Here." He handed her the camera. "See what we've built." She gratefully accepted the excuse
to rest. Her short brown hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, and her freckled cheeks
were flushed.
Six miles, downhill, and Sylvia was tiring. In the last hour she'd found a dozen reasons to
stop. Stones in her walking shoes. Burs inside her blouse.
Cadmann chuckled inwardly. The Colony's biologist was tough, and as stubborn about admitting
fatigue as he. She's also three months pregnant. Won't admit there are real differences between
the sexes. So be it.
Ernst loped down the slope. A brace of the large silver fishlike creatures the Colony had
dubbed "samlon" slapped against his muscular back. His grin split his broad face from ear to jug
ear. "Tiring out, Sylvia! You ought to work out! Exercise! I can show you."
Sylvia laughed. "Not right now, thanks, Ernst."
"Later."
Poor bastard. Ernst Cohen had been the solar system's leading authority on reproductive