"William Tenn - The Deserter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

The Deserter
William Tenn

November 10,2039—
Terran Supreme Command communique No. 18-673 for the twenty-four hours ending 0900
Monday, Terran capital time:


...whereupon sector HQ on Fortress Satellite Five ordered a strategic withdrawal of all interceptor
units. The withdrawal was accomplished without difficulty and with minimal loss.
The only other incident of interest in this period was the surrender of an enemy soldier of
undetermined rank, the first of these creatures from Jupiter to be taken alive by our forces. The capture
was made in the course of defending Cochabamba, Bolivia, from an enemy commando raid. Four
Jovians were killed in this unsuc-cessful assault upon a vital tin-supplying area after which the fifth laid
down his arms and begged that his life be spared. Upon capture by our forces, the Jovian claimed to be a
deserter and requested a safe-conduct to...

Mardin had been briefed on what to expect by the MP officer who'd escorted him into the cave.
Inevitably, though, his first view of the tank in which the alien floated brought out a long, whimpering grunt
of disbelief and remembered fear. It was at least sixty feet long by forty wide, and it reared off the rocky
floor to twice the height of a man. Whatever incredible material its sides had been composed of had
hours ago been covered by thick white layers of ice.
Cold air currents bouncing the foul, damp smell of methane back from the tank tweaked his nose
and pricked at his ears. Well, after all, Mardin thought, those things have a body temperature
somewhere in the neighborhood of minus 2000 Fahrenheit!
And he had felt this cold once before...
He shivered violently in response to the memory and zipped shut the fur-lined coveralls he'd been
issued at the entrance. "Must have been quite a job getting that thing in here." The casualness of his voice
surprised him and made him feel better.
"Oh, a special engineer task force did it in—let me see, now—" The MP lieuten-ant, a Chinese girl
in her late teens, pursed soft, coral lips at his graying hair. "Less than five hours, figuring from the moment
they arrived. The biggest problem was finding a cell in the neighborhood that was big enough to hold the
prisoner. This cave was perfect."
Mardin looked up at the ledge above their heads. Every ten feet, a squad of three men, highly
polished weapons ready for instant action. Atomic cannon squads alternating with men bent down under
the weight of dem-dem grenades. Grim-faced young subalterns, very conscious of the bigness of the
brass that occupied the plat-form at the far end of the cave, stamped back and forth along the ledge from
squad to squad, deadly little Royster pistolettos tinkling and naked in their sweating hands. Those kids,
he thought angrily, so well adjusted to it all!
The ledge ran along three sides of the cave; on the fourth, the low entrance from which Mardin had
just come, he had seen five steel Caesars implanted, long, pointed snouts throbbingly eager to throw
tremendous gusts of nuclear energy at the Jovian's rear. And amid the immense rock folds of the roof, a
labyrinth of slender, pencil-like bombs had been laid, held in place by clamps that would all open
simultaneously the moment a certain colonel's finger pressed a certain green button...
"If our friend in the tank makes one wrong move," Mardin muttered, "half of South America goes
down the drain."
 The girl started to chuckle, then changed her mind and frowned. "I'm sorry, Ma-jor Mardin, but I
don't like that. I don't like hearing them referred to as 'friends.' Even in a joke. Over a million and a half
people—three hundred thousand of them Chi-nese—have been wiped out by those—those ammoniated
flatworms!"