Read Ebook: Exploration Team by Leinster Murray Emshwiller Ed Illustrator

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Ebook has 436 lines and 20810 words, and 9 pages

Avant d'arriver ? cette solution, Gaston avait cru bon de d?vorer deux ou trois patrimoines dans le laps de temps qu'emploie le Sahara pour absorber, sur le coup de midi et demi, le contenu d'un arrosoir petit mod?le.

Le jeu, les tuyaux, les demoiselles, les petites f?tes et la grande f?te avaient ratiss? jusqu'aux moelles le jeune Puyr?leux. Mais c'est ga?ment tout de m?me et sans regrets qu'il <> le 112e r?giment du train des ?quipages ? Vernon.

Un philosophe optimiste, ce Gaston, avec cette devise: <>.

Et il se chargeait de la faire dr?le sa vie, dr?le sans rel?che, dr?le quand m?me.

Adorant les voitures, raffolant des chevaux, Puyr?leux n'eut aucun m?rite ? devenir la cr?me des tringlots.

Son habilet? proverbiale tint vite de la l?gende: il e?t fait passer le plus copieux convoi par le trou d'une aiguille sans en effleurer les parois.

Vernon s'entoure de charmants paysages, mais personnellement c'est un assez f?cheux port de mer. Pour ne citer qu'un d?tail, ?a manque de femmes, ? combien! De femmes dignes de ce nom, vous me comprenez?

Entre la basse d?bauche et l'adult?re, Gaston de Puyr?leux n'h?sita pas une seconde: il choisit les deux.

Il aima successivement des marchandes d'amour tarif?, des charcuti?res sentimentales, le tout sans pr?judice pour deux ou trois ?pouses de fonctionnaires et une femme colosse de la foire.

Ajoutons que cette derni?re passion demeura platonique et fut d?sastreuse pour la carri?re du jeune et brillant tringlot.

Son petit mollet aurait pu servir de cuisse ? plus d'une jolie femme; quant ? sa cuisse, seule une cha?ne d'arpenteur aurait pu en ?valuer les suggestifs contours.

Sa toilette se composait d'une robe en peluche chaudron qui s'harmonisait divinement avec une toque de velours ?carlate. Exquis, vous dis-je!

Ce serait mal conna?tre Puyr?leux que de le croire capable d'accepter une aussi humiliante d?faite.

Le dessein de Gaston ?tait d'une simplicit? biblique.

Par une nuit sombre, aid? de Plumard, son d?vou? brosseur, il arriva sur le champ de foire, lequel n'?tait troubl? que par les vagues rugissements de fauves m?lancolieux.

En moins de temps qu'il ne faut pour l'?crire, il attela ? la roulotte de la grosse dame deux chevaux appartenant au gouvernement fran?ais, d?cha?na les roues, fit sauter les cales....

Et les voil? partis ? grande allure vers la campagne endormie.

Rien d'abord ne r?v?la, dans la voiture, la pr?sence d'?me qui vive.

Les bons chevaux s'arr?t?rent docilement, et Puyr?leux se d?guisa imm?diatement en tringlot qui n'en m?ne pas large.

La grosse voix rauque sortait d'un gosier bien connu ? Vernon, le gosier du commandant baron Leboult de Montmachin.

Prenant vite son parti, Puyr?leux s'approcha de la fen?tre, son k?pi ? la main.

? la p?le clart? des ?toiles, le commandant reconnut le brigadier:

--Ah! c'est vous, Puyr?leux?

--Mon Dieu, oui, mon commandant!

--Qu'est-ce que vous foutez ici?

--Mon Dieu, mon commandant, je vais vous dire: me sentant un peu mal ? la t?te, j'ai pens? qu'un petit tour ? la campagne!...

Pendant cette conversation un peu p?nible des deux c?t?s, le commandant r?parait sa toilette actuellement sans prestige.

The rocket-flame grew steadily in size. Once, apparently, it tilted to adjust the boat's descending course. It went back to normal. A speck of incandescence at first, it grew until it was like a great star, and then a more-than-brilliant moon, and then it was a pitiless glaring eye. Huyghens averted his gaze from it. Sitka Pete sat lumpily--more than a ton of him--and blinked wisely at the dark jungle away from the light. Sourdough ignored the deepening, increasing rocket roar. He sniffed the air delicately. Faro Nell held Nugget firmly under one huge paw and licked his head as if tidying him up to be seen by company. Nugget wriggled.

The roar became that of ten thousand thunders. A warm breeze blew outward from the landing field. The rocket boat hurled downward, and its flame touched the mist of flying things, and they shriveled and burned and were hot. Then there were churning clouds of dust everywhere, and the center of the field blazed terribly,--and something slid down a shaft of fire, and squeezed it flat, and sat on it,--and the flame went out. The rocket boat sat there, resting on its tail fins, pointing toward the stars from which it came.

There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then, very faintly, the noises of the night came again. There were sounds like those of organ pipes, and very faint and apologetic noises like hiccups. All these sounds increased, and suddenly Huyghens could hear quite normally. Then a side-port opened with a quaint sort of clattering, and something unfolded from where it had been inset into the hull of the space boat, and there was a metal passageway across the flame-heated space on which the boat stood.

A man came out of the port. He reached back in and shook hands very formally. He climbed down the ladder rungs to the walkway. He marched above the steaming baked area, carrying a traveling bag. He reached the end of the walk and stepped gingerly to the ground. He moved hastily to the edge of the clearing. He waved to the space boat. There were ports. Perhaps someone returned the gesture. The walkway folded briskly back up to the hull and vanished in it. A flame exploded into being under the tail fins. There were fresh clouds of monstrous, choking dust and a brightness like that of a sun. There was noise past the possibility of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly through the dust cloud, and sprang higher and climbed more swiftly still. When Huyghens' ears again permitted him to hear anything, there was only a diminishing mutter in the heavens and a small bright speck of light ascending to the sky and swinging eastward as it rose to intercept the ship which had let it descend.

The night noises of the jungle went on. Life on Loren Two did not need to heed the doings of men. But there was a spot of incandescence in the day-bright clearing, and a short, brisk man looked puzzledly about him with a traveling bag in his hand.

Huyghens advanced toward him as the incandescence dimmed. Sourdough and Sitka preceded him. Faro Nell trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal eye on her offspring. The man in the clearing stared at the parade they made. It would be upsetting, even after preparation, to land at night on a strange planet, and to have the ship's boat and all links with the rest of the cosmos depart, and then to find one's self approached--it might seem stalked--by two colossal male Kodiak bears, with a third bear and a cub behind them. A single human figure in such company might seem irrelevant.

The new arrival gazed blankly. He moved, startledly. Then Huyghens called:

"Hello, there! Don't worry about the bears! They're friends!"

"Hah!" said the just-landed man. "Where are the robots? What in all the nineteen hells are these creatures? Why did you shift your station? I'm Roane, here to make a progress report on your colony."

Huyghens said:

"What colony?"

"Loren Two Robot Installation--" Then Roane said indignantly, "Don't tell me that that idiot skipper dropped me at the wrong place! This is Loren Two, isn't it? And this is the landing field. But where are your robots? You should have the beginning of a grid up! What the devil's happened here and what are these beasts?"

Huyghens grimaced.

"This," he said politely, "is an illegal, unlicensed settlement. I'm a criminal. These beasts are my confederates. If you don't want to associate with criminals you needn't, of course, but I doubt if you'll live till morning unless you accept my hospitality while I think over what to do about your landing. In reason, I ought to shoot you."

Faro Nell came to a halt behind Huyghens, which was her proper post in all out-door movement. Nugget, however, saw a new human. Nugget was a cub, and, therefore, friendly. He ambled forward ingratiatingly. He was four feet high at the shoulders, on all fours. He wriggled bashfully as he approached Roane. He sneezed, because he was embarrassed.

His mother overtook him swiftly and cuffed him to one side. He wailed. The wail of a six-hundred-pound Kodiak bear-cub is a remarkable sound. Roane gave ground a pace.

"I think," he said carefully, "that we'd better talk things over. But if this is an illegal colony, of course you're under arrest and anything you say will be used against you."

Huyghens grimaced again.

"Right," he said. "But now if you'll walk close to me, we'll head back to the station. I'd have Sourdough carry your bag--he likes to carry things--but he may need his teeth. We've half a mile to travel." He turned to the animals. "Let's go!" he said commandingly. "Back to the station! Hup!"

Grunting, Sitka Pete arose and took up his duties as advanced point of a combat team. Sourdough trailed, swinging widely to one side and another. Huyghens and Roane moved together. Faro Nell and Nugget brought up the rear. Which, of course, was the only relatively safe way for anybody to travel on Loren Two, in the jungle, a good half mile from one's fortress-like residence.

But there was only one incident on the way back. It was a night-walker, made hysterical by the lane of light. It poured through the underbrush, uttering cries like maniacal laughter.

Sourdough brought it down, a good ten yards from Huyghens. When it was all over, Nugget bristled up to the dead creature, uttering cub-growls. He feigned to attack it.

His mother whacked him soundly.

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