"Larry Niven - The Integral Trees (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

The creature didn't try to escape: it was still fluttering toward them.
Harp's grapnel grazed its side and passed on. Harp yanked, trying to hook the beast, and
missed again. He reeled in line for another try.
Gavving was armpit-deep in branchlets and cotton, toes digging deeper, hands maintaining
his deathgrip on the line. With eyes on him, he continued to behave as if he wanted contact with
the killer beast. He bellowed, "Harp, where can I hurt it?"
"Eye sockets, I guess."
The beast had misjudged. Its flank smashed bark from the trunk above their heads,
dreadfully close. The trunk shuddered. Gavving howled in terror. Laython howled in rage and threw
his grapnel ahead of it.
It grazed the swordbird's flank. Laython pulled hard on the line and sank the hardwood
tines deep in flesh.
The swordbird's tail froze. Perhaps it was thinking things over, watching them with two
good eyes while the wind pulled it west.
Laython's line went taut. Then Gavving~'s. Spine branches ripped through Gavving's
inadequate toes. Then the immense mass of the beast had pulled him into the sky.
His own throat closed tight, but he heard Laython shriek. Laython too had been pulled
loose.
Torn branchlets were still clenched in Gavving~s toes. He looked
down into the cushiony expanse of the tuft, wondering whether to let go and drop. But his line was
still anchored . . . and wind was stronger than tide; it could blow him past the tuft, past the


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entire branch, out and away. Instead he crawled along the line, away from their predatorprey.
Laython wasn't retreating. He had readied his harpoon and was waiting.
The swordbird decided. Its body snapped into a curve. The serrated tail slashed
effortlessly through Gavving's line. The swordbird flapped hard, making west now. Laython's line
went taut; then branchlets ripped and his line pulled free. Gavving snatched for it and missed.
He might have pulled himself back to safety then, but he continued to watch.
Laython poised with spear ready, his other arm waving in circles to hold his body from
turning, as the predator flapped toward him. Almost alone among the creatures of the Smoke Ring,
men have no wings.
The swordbird's body snapped into a U. Its tail slashed Laython in half almost before he
could move his spear. The beast's mouth snapped shut four times, and Laython was gone. Its mouth
continued to work, trying to deal with Gavving's harpoon in its throat, as the wind carried it
east.

The Scientist's hut was like all of Quinn Tribe's huts: live spine branches fashioned into
a wickerwork cage. It was bigger than some, but there was no sense of luxury. The roof and walls
were a clutter of paraphernalia stuck into the wickerwork: boards and turkey quills and red
tuftberry dye for ink, tools for teaching, tools for science, and relics from the time before men
left the stars.
The Scientist entered the hut with the air of a blind man. His hands were bloody to the
elbows. He scraped at them with handfuls of foliage, talking under his breath. "Damn, damn
drillbits. They just burrow in, no way to stop them." He looked up. "Grad?"
"Day. Who were you talking to, yourself?"
"Yes." He scrubbed at his arms ferociously, then hurled the wads of bloody foliage away