Harry Harrison To the Stars Trilogy

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

lumper found toothsome steel. It settled down, firmly draped over the great
machine, and began placidly to eat it.
"Don't be stupid!" Lee Ciou shouted, trying to make himself heard above the
babble of voices. "Just think about stellar distances before you start talking
about radio signals. Sure I could put together a big transmitter, no problem
at all. I could blast out a signal that could be even received on
Earth-someday. But it would take twenty-seven years to reach the nearest
inhabited planet. And maybe they wouldn't even be listening...."
"Order, order, order," Ivan Semenov called out, hitting the table with the
gavel in time to the words. "Let us have some order. Let us speak in turn and
be recognized.
We are getting nowhere acting in this fashion."
"We're getting nowhere in any case!" someone shouted. "This is all a waste of
time."
There were loud whistles and boos at this, and more banging of the gavel. The
telephone light beside Semenov blinked rapidly and he picked up the handpiece,
stiH
banging the gavel. He listened, gave a single word of assent and hung the
instrument up. He did not use the gavel again but instead raised his voice and
shouted.
"Emergency!"
There was instant silence and he nodded. "Jan Kulozik-are you here?"
Jan was seated near the rear of the dome and had not taken part in the
discussion.
Wrapped in his own he was scarcely aware of the shouting men, or of the
silence, and had been roused only when he heard his name spoken. He stood. He
was tall and wiry, and would have been thin but for the hard muscles, the
result of long years of physical work. There was grease on his coveralls, and
more smeared on his skin, yet he was obviously more than just a mechanic. The
way he held himself, ready yet restrained, and the way he looked toward the
chairman spoke as clearly as did the golden cogwheel symbol on his collar.
"Trouble in the fields at Taekeng-four," Semenov said. "Seems a lumper tangled
with a harvester and knocked it out. They want you right away.
"Wait, wait for me," a small man called out, fighting his way through the
crowd and hurrying after Jan. It was Chun Taekeng, head of the Taekeng family.
He was as ill-tempered as he was old, wrinkled, and bald. He punched one man
who did not get out of his way fast enough, and kicked ankles of others to
move them aside. Jan did not slow his fast walk, so that Chun had to run,
panting, to catch up with him.
The maintenance copter was in front of the machine shop, and Jan had the
turbines fired and the blade turning as Chun Taekeng climbed arthritically in.
"Ought to kill the lumpers, wipe out the species," he gasped as he dropped
into the seat by Jan. Jan did not answer. Even if there were any need, which
there was not, wiping out the native species would be next to impossible. He
ignored Chun, who was muttering angrily to himself, and opened the throttle
wide as soon as they had altitude. He had to get there as 50()fl as possible.
Lumpers could be dangerous if they weren't handled right. Most of the farmers
knew little about them-and cared even less.
Page 98
Page 96
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Harrison, Harry - To the Stars Trilogy.txt
The countryside drifted by below them like an undulating and yellow specked
green blanket. Harvesting was in its final stages so that the fields of corn
no longer
file:///F|/rah/Harry%20Harrison/Harrison,%20Harry%20-%20To%20The%20Stars%20Tri
logy%20(UC).txt (79 of 234) [5/21/03 1:29:01 AM]
file:///F|/rah/Harry%20Harrison/Harrison,%20Harry%20-%20To%20The%20Stars%20Tri
logy%20(UC).txt stretched away smoothly in all directions, but had been cut
back in great gaps by the harvesting machines. Rising columns of vapor marked
the places where the machines were working. Only the sky was unchanging, a
deep bowl of unrelieved gray stretching from horizon to horizon. Four years
since he had seen the sun, Jan thought, four endless and unchanging years.
People here didn't seem to notice it, but at times the unchanging halflight
was more than he could bear and he would reach for the little green jar of
pills.
"There, down there," Chun Taekeng called out shrilly, pointing a clawlike
finger.
"Land right there."
Jan ignored him. The shining gold hulk of the harvester was below them, half
covered by the draped mass of the lumper. A big one, six, seven tonnes at
least. It was usually only the smaller ones that reached the farms. Trucks and
track-trucks were pulled up around it; a cloud of dust showed another one on
its way. Jan circled slowly, while he put a call through on the radio for the
Big Hook, not heeding
Chun's orders to land at once. When he finally did set down, over a hundred
meters from the harvester, the little man was beginning to froth. Jan was
completely unafl~cted; it was the members of the Taekeng family who would
suffer.
There was a small crowd gathered around the flattened harvester, pointing and
talking excitedly. Some of the women had chilled bottles of beer in buckets
and were setting out glasses. It was a carnival atmosphere, a welcome break
from the monotony and drudgery of their lives. An admiring circle watched
while a young man with a welding torch held it close to the draping curtain of
brown flesh that hung down the side of the machine. The lumper rippled when
the flame touched it; greasy tendrils of foul-smelling smoke rose from the
burnt flesh.
"Turn off that torch and get out of here," Jan said.
The man gaped up slackly at Jan, mouth hanging 6pen, but did not turn off the
torch or move. There was scarcely any distance between his hairline and his
eyebrows and he had a retarded look. The Taekeng family was very small and
inbred.
"Chun," Jan called out to the Family Head as he tottered up, wheezing. "Get
that torch away before there is trouble."
Chun shrieked with anger and emphasised his remarks with a sharp kick. The
young man fled with the torch. Jan had a pair of heavy gloves tucked into his
belt and he pulled them on. "I'll need some help," he said. "Get shovels and
help me lift the edge of this thing. Don't touch it underneath though. It
drips acid that will eat a hole in you."
With an effort a flap was lifted and Jan bent to look under. The flesh was
white and hard, wet with acid. He found one of the many jumping legs, the size
and roughly the same shape as a human leg. It was folded into a socket in the
flesh and it pulled back when he dragged on it. But it could not resist a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne