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

into a chamber that I had not seen before. Here were two tables standing about
twenty inches apart, the top of each a beautifully polished slab of solid
ersite. At one end of the tables was a shelf on which were two empty glass
vessels and two similar vessels filled with a clear, colorless liquid resembling
water. Beneath each table was a small motor. There were numerous surgical
instruments neatly arranged, various vessels containing colored liquids, and
paraphernalia such as one might find in a laboratory or hospital concerning the
uses of which I knew nothing, for I am, first and last, a fighting man and
nothing else.
Ras Thavas directed Tor-dur-bar to lay Gantun Gur on one of the tables. "Now get
on the other one yourself," he said.
"You are really going to do it?" exclaimed Tor-dur-bar. "You are going to give
me a beautiful new body and face?"
"I wouldn't call it particularly beautiful," said Ras Thavas, with a slight
smile.
"Oh, it is lovely," cried Tor-dur-bar. "I shall be your slave forever if you do
this for me."
Although Gantun Gur was securely bound, it took both John Carter and myself to
hold him still while Ras Thavas made two incisions in his body, one in a large
vein and one in an artery. To these incisions he attached the ends of two tubes,
one of which was connected with an empty glass receptacle and the other to the
similar receptacle containing the colorless liquid. The connections made, he
pressed a button controlling the small motor beneath the table, and Gantun Gur's
blood was pumped into the empty jar while the contents of the other jar were
forced into the emptying veins and arteries. Of course Gantun Gur lost
consciousness almost immediately after the motor was started and I breathed a
sigh of relief when I had heard the last of him. When all the blood had been
replaced by the colorless liquid, Ras Thavas removed the tubes and closed the
openings in the body with bits of adhesive material; then he turned to
Tor-dur-bar.
"You're quite sure you want to be a red man?" he asked.
"I can't wait," replied the hormad.
Ras Thavas repeated the operation he had just performed on Gantun Gur; then he
sprayed both bodies with what he told us was a strong antiseptic solution and
then himself, scrubbing his hands thoroughly. He now selected a sharp knife from
among the instruments and removed the scalps from both bodies, following the
hair line entirely around each head. This done, he sawed through the skull of
each with a tiny circular saw attached to the end of a flexible, revolving
shaft, following the line he had exposed by the removal of the scalps.
It was a long and marvelously skillful operation that followed, and at the end
of four hours he had transferred the brain of Tor-dur-bar to the brain pan of
him who had been Gantun Gur, deftly connected the severed nerves and ganglia,
replaced the skull and scalp and bound the head securely with adhesive material,
which was not only antiseptic and healing but locally anaesthetic as well.
He now reheated the blood he had drawn from Gantun Gur's body, adding a few
drops of some clear chemical solution, and as he withdrew the liquid from the
veins and arteries he pumped the blood back to replace it. Immediately following
this he administered a hypodermic injection,
"In an hour," he said, "Tor-dur-bar will awaken to a new life in a new body."
It was while I was watching this marvelous operation that a mad plan occurred to