"09 - Synthetic Men of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

were a number of red Martians. "You will stay here until you are sent for," said
the hormad. "Do not try to escape." Then he left us.
"Escape!" said John Carter with a wry smile. "I have escaped from many places;
and I can probably escape from this city, but escaping from the Toonolian
Marshes is another matter. However, we shall see."
The other prisoners, for such they proved to be, approached us. There were five
of them. "Kaor!" they greeted us. We exchanged names; and they asked us many
questions about the outside world, as though they had been prisoners for years.
But they had not. The fact that Morbus was so isolated seemed to impart to them
the feeling that they had been out of the world for a long time. Two of them
were Phundahlians, one was from Toonol, one from Ptarth, and one from Duhor.
"For what purpose do they keep prisoners?" asked John Carter.
"They use some as officers to train and command their warriors," explained
Pandar, one of the Phundahlians. "The bodies of others are used to house the
brains of those of the hormads intelligent enough to serve in high places. The
bodies of others go to the culture laboratories, where their tissue is used in
the damnable work of Ras Thavas."
"Ras Thavas!" exclaimed The Warlord. "He is here in Morbus?"
"He is that – a prisoner in his own city, the servant of the hideous creatures
he has created," replied Gan Had of Toonol.
"I don't follow you," said John Carter.
"After Ras Thavas was driven from his great laboratories by Vobis Kan, Jeddak of
Toonol," explained Gan Had, "he came to this island to perfect a discovery he
had been working on for years. It was the creation of human beings from human
tissue. He had perfected a culture in which tissue grew continuously. The growth
from a tiny particle of living tissue filled an entire room in his laboratory,
but it was formless. His problem was to direct this growth. He experimented with
various reptiles which reproduce certain parts of their bodies, such as toes,
tails, and limbs, when they are cut off; and eventually he discovered the
principle. This he has applied to the control of the growth of human tissue in a
highly specialized culture. The result of these discoveries and experiments are
the hormads. Seventy-five per cent of the buildings in Morbus are devoted to the
culture and growth of these horrid creatures which Ras Thavas turns out in
enormous numbers.
"Practically all of them are extremely low in intelligence; but a few developed
normal brains, and some of these banded together to take over the island and
establish a kingdom of their own. On threat of death, they have compelled Ras
Thavas to continue to produce these creatures in great numbers; for they have
conceived a stupendous plan which is nothing less than to build up an army of
millions of hormads and with them conquer the world, They will take Phundahl and
Toonol first, and then gradually spread out over the entire surface of the
globe."
"Amazing," said John Carter, "but I think they have reckoned without a full
understanding of all the problems such an undertaking will involve. It is
inconceivable, for instance, that Barsoom could feed such an army in the field;
and this little island certainly could not feed the nucleus of such an army."
"There you are mistaken," replied Gan Had. "The food for the hormads is produced
by means almost identical with those which produce them – a slightly different
culture; that is all. Animal tissue grows with great rapidity in this culture,
which can be carried along with an army in tanks, constantly providing