"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 3 - Other People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

We go back. Maybe we learn something."

The others were afraid, but he was Wise One, One Who Knows
Best. If he thought they should go back, that was the thing to do.
Sometimes it was good for one to do the thinking for the others. It
saved argument, and things got done.

At the foot of the cliff, one gotza lay on the open grass, and
feekee-birds had begun to peck at it. That was good; feekee-birds
never pecked at anything that had life. They flew away, scolding, as
he and the others approached.

There was a small bleeding hole under one of the gotza's wings,
as though a sharp stick had been stabbed into it, though he could
not see how anything could go through the tough scaly hide. Then
he looked at the other side, and gave a cry of astonishment that
brought all the others running. Whatever had stabbed the gotza
had gone clear through, tearing out a great gaping wound. Maybe it
had been thunder that had killed the gotza, though the sky had
been blue; he had seen what thunder flashes did when they struck
trees. He looked at the other gotza, the one that had fallen through
the boughs of the tree. There was a hole under its chin, and the
whole top of the head was gone, the skull shattered.

He thought of going to look for the third gotza, which had fallen in
the woods, but decided not to bother. The others were exchanging
shocked comments. Nobody had ever heard of anything being
killed like this.

At first, he could persuade none of the others to climb to the top of
the cliff, and so started up alone. Before he had reached the top,
however, they were all following, ashamed to stay below. There
were no trees at the top, only scattered bushes and sparse grass
and sandy ground. Everything was still and, until he found the
footprints, quite ordinary.

They resembled no footprints any of them had ever seen or heard
of; they were a little like the footprints of People, and whatever had
made them had walked on two feet. But there were no toe-prints,
only a flat sole that widened at the middle and tapered to a
rounded end, and a heel-mark that looked like the backward print of
some kind of hoof. And they were huge, three times as big as the
footprints of People. Whatever had made them had walked with a
stride longer than a person's height. There were two sets, only
slightly different in size and shape.

He wondered for a moment if they might not have been made by
some kind of giant People. No, that couldn't be; People were
People, and there were no other kind. At least, nobody had ever