"Bradbury, Ray - Pendulum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

I had already seen it do three times. Later we would send a man out in the
machine.

The moment arrived. But fate had decreed it was to be my moment of doom.
Something went wrong, even now I do not know what or why. Perhaps the television
concentration in the room affected the stress of the time-fields my rotors set
up. The last thing I remember seeing, as I reached out and touched the main
control switch, were the neat rows of smiling white faces of the important men
seated in the laboratory. My hand came down on the switch....
Even now I shudder, remembering the vast mind-numbing horror of that moment. A
terrific sheet of electrical flame, greenish and writhing and alien, leaped
across the laboratory from wall to wall, blasting into ashes everything in its
path!

Before millions of television witnesses I had slain the world's greatest
scientists!
No, not all. Leske and myself and a few others who were behind the machine
escaped with severe burns. I was least injured of all, which seemed to increase
the fury of the populace against me. I was swept to a hasty trial, faced jeering
throngs who called out for my death.
"Destroy the time machine," was the watchword, "and destroy this murderer with
it!"
Murderer! I had only sought to help humanity. In vain I tried to explain the
accident, but popular resentment is a thing not to be reasoned with.
One day, weeks later, I was taken from my secret prison and hurried, under heavy
guard, to the hospital room where Leske lay. He raised himself on one arm and
his smouldering eyes looked at me. That's all I could see of him, just his eyes;
the rest of him was swathed in bandages. For a moment he just looked; and if
ever I saw insanity, but a cunning insanity, in a man's eyes, it was then,
For about ten seconds he looked, then with a great effort he pointed a bulging,
bandaged arm at me.

"No, do not destroy him," he mumbled to the authorities gathered around.
"Destroy his machine, yes, but save the parts. I have a better plan, a fitting
one, for this man who murdered the world's greatest scientists. "
I remembered Leske's old hatred of me, and I shuddered.
IN THE weeks that followed, one of my guards told me with a sort of malicious
pleasure of my time device being dismantled, and secret things being done with
it. Leske was directing the operations from his bed.
At last came the day when I was led forth and saw the huge pendulum for the
first time. As I looked at it there, fantastic and formidible, I realized as
never before the extent of Leske's insane revenge. And the populace seemed
equally vengeful, equally cruel, like the ancient Romans on a gladiatorial
holiday. In a sudden panic of terror, I shrieked and tried to leap away.
That only amused the people who crowded the electrical sidewalks around the
plaza. They laughed and shrieked derisively.

My guards thrust me into the glass pendulum head and I lay there quivering,
realizing the irony of my fate. This pendulum had been built from the precious
metal and glassite of my own time device! It was intended as a monument to my