Hellstrom's Hive (Frank Herbert) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 18)

The words of Nils Hellstrom.

Unlike other creatures who struggled against their environment, the insect learned early to seek its protective embrace. He created an endless wardrobe of camouflage. He and his environment became one. When predators came, he was nowhere to be found. So artistic were his methods of deception that predators could crawl upon his body in their search for prey. He did not choose merely one means of escape, but countless means. Not for him speed or the treetops, but both of these, and more.

Tymiena saw one flank of the sweep just as the first searchers saw her, confirming Old Harvey’s prediction. Early in her flight, she had tripped in a rabbit hole and sprained her left ankle. The pain had forced her to make the climb into a low oak where she had braced herself in a notch and taken off the shoe on the injured foot. She sat wedged in the notch about twenty feet up, the little automatic held firmly in her right hand now. A powerful little pen-size flashlight was in her left hand, her thumb on its switch.

The ankle throbbed with a fiery pain that made thought difficult. She wondered if she had broken a bone.

Running cattle gave her the first indication of trouble. She heard them snorting above the pounding of their hooves as they passed. Then came a mysterious swish-swish hissing. This sound grew louder until it circled her tree and stopped. She could just make out the darker shadows of the hunters in the blackness. They had formed a rough circle all around her.

In panic, she thumbed the flashlight switch, swept its beam in a short arc around the part of the circle that faced her. At first sight of the nightmasks and stunwands, she gasped, recognizing deadly menace. Without thinking, she began shooting.