They heard a snapping sound in the brush. An enemy guard appeared suddenly. He had dissolved his force-field and he was walking warily2 on the wet earth. He held an energy gun cradled in his arms. The enemy walked with cat-like caution—but, in spite of himself, it was the amateur caution of a man who relied on the protective devices of a machine.
Slowly Lanny's lips twisted in a sneer3. This was the enemy, heavily armed and invulnerable—but helpless without his mechanical gadgets4. Lanny's hand moved soundlessly over the ground. He grasped a stone. The enemy was less than twenty feet away; it was a target a child couldn't miss.
Lanny swung into a sitting position and simultaneously5 threw his stone. The guard dropped, a wound torn in his skull6. Pendillo and his sons slid forward again. As they passed the dead Almost-man, Lanny worked the energy gun out of of the guard's hands.
It took them an hour to reach the cliffs overlooking the sea. They turned north again, seeking shelter among the rocks. And they came abruptly7 upon a wide, bowl-shaped cavity in the earth. Through the fog they saw the narrow passage between the cavity and the sea. In the center of the sheltered, artificial pool a metal dome8 rose some fifty feet above the quiet water. The dome, protected by a force-field, was joined to the land by a catwalk. From its waterline a ridged, white tube snaked upward and disappeared among the trees on the north bank of the pool. A repair barge9 swung at anchor under the catwalk. A towering pylon10 raised a sound receptor and an automatic energy gun high above the roof of the dome.
Pendillo whispered, "This must be one of their automatic mining operations. I've never seen one before."
Gill replied, "Lanny and I have come upon lots of them in the hills. The domes11 run themselves. Sometimes the Almost-men come and check over the machines; that's what the barge is here for, I think."
"The domes dig out minerals or pump oil," Lanny added, "and send it to the skyports through the white pipes. But you can never get close to them. The whole operation is protected by the energy guns."
"They have us pinned down here," Gill said, "unless we can use that barge."
Lanny fingered the energy gun he had taken from the dead guard. "All we have to do is knock out the pylon." He raised the weapon and aimed it at the nest of delicate instruments at the base of the pillar. He turned the firing dial. The flame knifed through the fog. The tower disintegrated12 in a blaze of dust.
The three men slid down the rock and plunged13 through the cold water toward the barge. In the night sky they heard the whine14 of an approaching force-field car.
They leaped aboard the barge, hauling Dr. Pendillo in after them. Gill knelt in front of the motor in the stern. Lanny watched the sky, with the energy gun clutched in his hand. He knew the charge in the chamber15 was nearly spent. There might be enough left to hold off the enemy for a moment, but certainly no longer.
Frantically16 Gill turned the wheels until the motor stirred into life. As it did the glowing sphere swung down upon them. Lanny raised his gun and fired. Fear projected something of himself into the leaping charge of energy—a confusing sensation of screaming joy and chaotic17 horror that left his mind limp and numb18. It seemed that he had actually touched the force-field of the sphere; he was physically19 tearing apart the tense, strait-jacket of solidified20 energy.
The sphere lurched upward and away into the night. As it did, the port broke open and a figure dropped toward the water. It was Tak Laleen. She reached for the tiny box fastened to her breast, trying to activate21 her protective force-field capsule. Lanny knew he had to stop her, or she might still be able to prevent their escape.
He sprang into the water, clawing for her feet as she fell toward him. She screamed and her screams died as he dragged her beneath the surface. He tore the box from her hands and let it fall.
When they broke the surface, his hands were on her throat and all his lifelong hatred22 of the Almost-men was in his finger tips as he pressed his thumbs down upon her windpipe. Pendillo cried out,
"Don't kill her, Lanny! No man has ever taken one of the enemy alive."
Reluctantly Lanny relaxed his grip. Tak Laleen screamed again and slapped her hands at his face. Abruptly she paused and stared into his eyes.
"You!" she gasped23. "The black savage24. No wonder my sphere—In the name of the All of the Universe, kill me quickly! Kill me now, as civilized25 beings have a right to die—not your way. Not your way!"
Sheltered by the mist and the darkness, the stolen barge moved rapidly north along the coast. Tak Laleen lay unconscious in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in her white uniform; Pendillo sat shivering beside her. Lanny and Gill stood in the stern. Although the motor was controlled by an automatic navigator, Gill tore out the flimsy destination tape and guided the wheel manually.
"Even this the Almost-men can't do for themselves," he remarked to his brother.
"Do you suppose they really can't read direction from the sun or the stars?"
"All their brains are in their machines."
"And machines are nothing."
"Juan has always said that," Gill said slowly. "It sounds logical and reasonable. But I don't know what it means, Lanny!"
For a long time they stood watching the heaving shadow of the sea, each of them trying in his own way to make sense of the riddle27. Suddenly the motor sputtered28. Gill tinkered with the machine until it was purring smoothly29 again.
"The power cells are nearly empty," he said. "We'll have to run the barge aground sometime tomorrow and start walking again."
"Yes, I know." Lanny clenched30 his fist over his brother's arm. "But how do we know it, Gill? How can we run this machine, when we have never seen it before?"
Gill laughed uneasily. "Don't forget, before the invasion our people were pretty good at building machines, too."
"That doesn't answer the question, Gill. When I fired the energy gun, I felt as if it were a part of myself—as if I knew all the cells in the metal just as I know my own."
"That happened to me when I sat in the automobile31 in the showroom."
"It scares me, Gill. I keep thinking I should remember something but—"
"I was scared last night, too, because I thought I'd made the motor go by forcing it to move with my mind. And that's absurd. If we had that much control over machines, as we do over our hunting clubs, how could the enemy ever have defeated us?"
Tak Laleen opened her eyes, then, and sat up stiffly. The wind struck her face and swept her hair back. Shivering, she pulled her uniform tight around her throat.
"Where are you taking me?" she demanded.
"You're our prisoner," Lanny answered.
"The Sacred Triangle will not pay ransom32. We volunteered to serve here on the earth; we knew the risks."
Lanny moved toward her. Fearfully she slid away from him until her back was against the gunwale. "Don't touch me!" she begged.
He shrugged33 and dropped on the deck close to her feet. "When you came out of the Triangle to take care of our sick, you never were repulsed34 by—"
"Not the normal ones, no."
"Your aversion applies only to me?"
"Don't pretend." She twisted her hands together. "What kind of a—a thing are you?"
Juan Pendillo intervened, "We dragged you aboard rather unceremoniously, Tak Laleen. Let me introduce my sons, Lanny and Gill."
"You're lying. Where did you get the metals to make him?"
Lanny stared at his father. "Is she—has her mind been affected—"
"All this beating around the bush is so foolish." Suddenly she seized Lanny's arm and dug her nails, like claws, into his skin. "But—but it is real! You're not a machine." Her eyes glazed35 and she fainted again.
By dawn the motor of the barge was missing continuously and the speed had been reduced to a relatively36 slow forty knots. The sun rose, dispelling37 the fog, and the wind on the sea became a little warmer. Juan Pendillo tried to pace the tiny deck, flaying38 his arms to restore the circulation. Tak Laleen, having recovered from her second faint, sat brooding with her uniform clutched tightly over her throat.
Periodically the missionary39 talked to Pendillo. She asked again and again what they were going to do with her. Either ransom or murder were the only possibilities that occurred to her. That point of view was a fair index to the attitude the Almost-men held toward the survivors40 on the planet they had conquered. Mankind they considered filthy41, illiterate42 barbarians43; the primitive44 squalor of the prison compounds was their proof.
Lanny understood enough of the religion of the Triangle—that noble abstract of God which the enemy called the All of the Universe—to know why the conquerors45 had to use a semantic device to define their superiority. The Almost-men were a liberty-loving society. Their government decrees and their religious poetry abounded46 with vivid words of freedom. They could not have maintained an integrated social soul and enslaved a culture of their peers; therefore, they had to invent a verbal technique for reducing man to the status of a savage.
"As we have always done ourselves," Pendillo told Lanny when he first became aware of the inconsistency as a child. "But don't condemn47 the enemy for it, my son. Words have the peculiar48 habit of becoming anything we want them to be. If we set our minds to it, we can make anything true. The Almost-men are not merely alien invaders49; they are like man himself—the most tragic50 distortion of our worst traits. Someday we shall make war on them, yes, but before we do we must learn how to conquer ourselves."
Early in the afternoon the power cells in the barge were exhausted51. Gill drove the ship up on a desolate52 beach, at the place where Monterey had once stood. Nothing survived but an occasional piece of debris53, buried in the drifted sand, for Monterey, close to a military camp, had been heavily bombed by the invaders.
"We must find a place to camp," Pendillo advised. "I don't believe either Tak Laleen or I have the strength to go any farther today."
They found it necessary to hike eight miles north of Monterey before they were beyond the area of total destruction. The ruins, scattered54 among the encroaching trees, became recognizable as skeletal relics55 of things that might once have been homes. They found one frame cottage still whole because it had been built close to a hillside. The battered56 walls would provide shelter for Pendillo and the missionary. Further, the house had a stone fireplace where they could cook their food, and close by a shallow spring bubbled from the dark earth.
Gill and Lanny trapped a deer and carried the carcass back to the cottage. Both Tak Laleen and Pendillo were struggling to make a fire. Lanny took over the chore and in seconds flames leaped through the dead brush heaped on the hearth57. It had always puzzled him that Pendillo could have taught him the techniques, and still not be able to make the fire himself. Tak Laleen was just as helpless. Without their machines the Almost-men were nothing: again and again that became apparent.
Gill stripped off the deer hide carefully so it could be made into a second jacket for Pendillo. While he stretched the skin in the afternoon sun, Lanny turned the meat over the fire. When they began to eat, both Lanny and Gill were amused that Tak Laleen had manners as fastidious as Pendillo's. The missionary nibbled58 delicately at her food, as if she thought the grease would soil her lips. Afterward59 she and Pendillo washed in water which they heated over the fire. Pendillo's sons stripped and swam in the ocean, as a man properly should to make himself clean.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
chatter
|
|
| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
warily
|
|
| adv.留心地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
gadgets
|
|
| n.小机械，小器具（ gadget的名词复数 ） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
simultaneously
|
|
| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
skull
|
|
| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
dome
|
|
| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
barge
|
|
| n.平底载货船，驳船 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
pylon
|
|
| n.高压电线架，桥塔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
domes
|
|
| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
disintegrated
|
|
| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
plunged
|
|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
whine
|
|
| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
chamber
|
|
| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
frantically
|
|
| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
chaotic
|
|
| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
numb
|
|
| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
physically
|
|
| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
solidified
|
|
| （使）成为固体，（使）变硬，（使）变得坚固( solidify的过去式和过去分词 )； 使团结一致； 充实，巩固； 具体化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
activate
|
|
| vt.使活动起来，使开始起作用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
hatred
|
|
| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
gasped
|
|
| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
civilized
|
|
| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
fathom
|
|
| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
riddle
|
|
| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
sputtered
|
|
| v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的过去式和过去分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
smoothly
|
|
| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
clenched
|
|
| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
automobile
|
|
| n.汽车，机动车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
ransom
|
|
| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
repulsed
|
|
| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
glazed
|
|
| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
relatively
|
|
| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
dispelling
|
|
| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
flaying
|
|
| v.痛打( flay的现在分词 )；把…打得皮开肉绽；剥（通常指动物）的皮；严厉批评 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
missionary
|
|
| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
survivors
|
|
| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
filthy
|
|
| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
illiterate
|
|
| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
barbarians
|
|
| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
conquerors
|
|
| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
abounded
|
|
| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
condemn
|
|
| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
invaders
|
|
| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
tragic
|
|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
exhausted
|
|
| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
desolate
|
|
| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
debris
|
|
| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
scattered
|
|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
relics
|
|
| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
battered
|
|
| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
hearth
|
|
| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
nibbled
|
|
| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的过去式和过去分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
afterward
|
|
| adv.后来；以后 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |