"Alan E. Nourse - Peacemaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nourse Alan E)

too fast, he can see too well. And savage! He has a heat gun, do you realize that? But not One of us was
killed with a heat gun. It's butchery, I tell you—no, we won't get out of here, alive."
"And this thing that's stalking us. What will it do? Take the ship back home? Run loose there the way
he's run loose here? Killing and maiming? We've got to stop it, Jock. We can't let it get home."
Jock stared at the instrument panel. "I know one way we can stop him," he said slowly. "It's suicide,
but it would keep him from going home. And it would mean the end of him, too, finally."
Charlie looked up, tired lines on his face. The fear was gone to resignation now, replaced by another
more terrible fear—the fear that they would be killed and leave this thing running loose—on the ship
"What is it, Jacques?"
Jacques picked up a space chart, and slowly ripped it in two. "This," he said. "We can cripple the
ship, foul up the controls, the gas storage, the charts —cripple it beyond repair. Then he can't do
anything! Wreck the engines, destroy the food, smash this ship so no one could ever do anything with it.
Completely wreck his chances to get home—"
They moved with sudden desperate swiftness. The heat gun sent up the space charts in wreaths of
flame, fused the chart file into a molten heap of aluminum. The engines stopped throbbing, giving way to
deathly silence broken only by the heat blasts and the heavy breathing of the two men. The instrument
panel melted and exploded, the gas control was smashed. The men worked in a frenzy of fearful
destruction, their own last escape going up in searing heat blasts, destruction that no man could even
hope to repair, ever
And back in the corner, behind the acceleration cots, Flicker purred and purred. Easy, satisfied
contentment filled him for the first time in days; he snickered as the alien creatures went on their path of
self-destruction. Everything would be all right now, and his leaders would be pleased at how it turned
out. He could bring back first-hand information about these creatures, vital, invaluable information. The
contact could be made another time. And then he could go back to his family—they'd really enjoy
hearing him tell about that alien, squirming and screeching with both arms ripped off—and have a long,
comfortable rest.
The helpless, simple fools! They could kill him so easily, if they only knew. Just a breath of hydrogen,
to combine with his high-oxygen metabolism, to explode him like a bomb. But they were destroying
everything they could, in a mad, frenzied attempt to stall the spaceship, to keep him out here in space to
perish with them! Such a complete job they were doing, and it was so completely and utterly useless.
True, no human being could ever repair those controls to regulate the atomic engines of the ship. No
human being could survive the weakening atmosphere long enough to repair the gas units. And even with
these repaired and functioning, a human being would be forever stranded in the vast, cold, friendless
reaches of space, without a perfect, detailed, visual memory of the space charts easily at his command.
For no human being could ever direct a ship blind to a destination, without the charts of the space
through which he flew. No human being would ever find his way out of the dead emptiness of such
uncharted space.
Flicker curled up and placed his nose gently on his tail, disinterested; unconcerned. A human being
would be hopelessly, irreparably doomed out here.
Flicker purred contentedly to himself as he considered the weaknesses of the human race which he
had observed. From their view, he was completely stranded.
But a cat can always find its way home.