"Jack Williamson - The Happiest Creature" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

"Why, if you allowed us to advertise for a specimen, half the population would
volunteer. "
"You can't advertise," the commandant said flatly. "Our first duty here is to guard
this young culture from any outside influence that might cripple its natural
development."
"Don't upset yourself." The fat man shrugged. "We're undercover experts. Our
specimen will never know that it has been collected, if that's the way you want it."
"It isn't." The commandant rose abruptly. "I will give your party every legitimate
assistance, but if I discover that you have tried to abduct one of these people I'll
con-fiscate your ship."
"Keep your precious pets," the collector grunted un-graciously. "We'll just go
ahead with our field studies. Live specimens aren 't really essential, anyhow. Our
technicians have prepared very authentic displays, with only animated replicas. "
"Very well." The commandant managed a somewhat sour smile. "With that
understanding, you may land."
He assigned two inspectors to assist the collector and make certain that the
quarantine regulations were re-spected. Undercover experts, they went on to Earth
ahead of the expedition, and met the interstellar ship a few weeks later at a
rendezvous on the night side of the planet.
The ship returned to the moon, while the outsiders spent several months traveling
on the planet, making psionic records and collecting specimens from the
unpro-tected species. The inspector reported no effort to violate the Covenants, and
everything went smoothly until the night when the ship came back to pick up the
expedition.
Every avoidable hazard had been painstakingly avoided. The collector and his
party brought their captured speci-mens to the pickup point in native vehicles,
traveling as Barstow Brothers' Wild Animal Shows. The ship dropped to meet them
at midnight, on an uninhabited desert plateau. A thousand such pickups had been
made without an incident, but that night things went wrong.
A native anthropoid had just escaped from a place of confinement. Though his
angered tribesmen pursued, he had outrun them in a series of stolen vehicles. They
blocked the roads, but he got away across the desert. When his last vehicle stalled,
he crossed a range of dry hills on foot in the dark. An unforeseen danger, he
blundered too near the waiting interstellar ship.
His pursuers discovered his abandoned car, and halted the disguised outsiders to
search their trucks and warn them that a dangerous convict was loose. To keep the
natives away from the ship, the inspectors invented a tale of a frightened man on a
horse, riding wildly in the op-posite direction.
They guided the native officers back to where they said they had seen the
imaginary horseman, and kept them oc-cupied until dawn. By that time, the
expedition was on the ship, native trucks and all, and safely back in space.
The natives never recaptured their prisoner. Through that chance-in-a-million that
can never be eliminated by even the most competent undercover work, he had got
aboard the interstellar ship.
The fugitive anthropoid was a young male. Physically, he appeared human
enough, even almost handsome. Lean from the prison regime, he carried himself
defiantly erect. Some old injury had left an ugly scar across his cheek and his thin
lips had a snarling twist, but he had a poised alertness and a kind of wary grace.
He was even sufficiently human to possess clothing and a name. His filthy
garments were made of twisted animal and vegetable fibers and the skins of