"Campbell, John W Jr - The Brain Pirates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"Could you tie that thing up somehow, Terruns, so we can experiment on it?" asked Penton wearily. "I have an idea that we'll have to hunt for our ship."
"Oh, yes. The medical staff is here, by the way. I'll tie it up, you can get out of the water, and they will strap you up more comfortably."
"You're sure that ship is gone? I don't see how a krutt could move it."
"Not one krull. A troop of krull. We always fasten down anything movable. Even stones. They love to put them in the street, and sit on them. Very exciting crashes. A troop of krull, I'm afraid-but they won't carry it more than five miles or so. They lose interest quickly."
"Penton," said Blake softly, "you know, I left the lift-drive on seven-eighths, so the ship wouldn't mar the turf. I'll bet we are here three months looking for that-blasted thing. Five miles and an invisible ship. More fun-"
"I'd take you up on that bet, Blake, but for one thing. I know we won't be here three months looking for it."
"Why?"
"Because we have emergency rations in the suits for only one week, and they use a mixture of copper selenate and potassium arsenate for fertilizer on the local crops. Laugh that off."
"You left out potassium cyanide," Blake groaned.
"I didn't leave out cyanide; that's about the only poison they don't use. All their plants want nice heavy metals like lead and copper and mercury. For non-metals they prefer the heavy ones like selenium and telurium and arsenic. This world, it would seem, is lousy with heavy metals, and so are the plants. And due to a sad neglect in my education, I never learned to digest those compounds."
IV END OF THE KRULL
BLAKE LOOKED down at himself thoughtfully. Elastic bandages wound in puttee fashion about each leg joined and wound up on his abdomen to his chest. He squeaked faintly when he moved.
"Did they give you the oil can, Ted?"
"No. But this should make a good shock-absorber. Step on it, will you? There's a chauffeur waiting to take us down to the Powers and Mechanisms Building again. Terruns said he'd meet us there."
"The bird that wrapped me ought to make a living as a mummy-maker. Did Terruns say how they go about looking for lost things?"
"Their search methods are simple and ineffective; gang of
men with a long rope between them. Hurry up; I'll wait Outside."
Half an hour later they joined Terruns at his office, slightly jittery, but somewhat to their own surprise, in one piece. Terruns, they had learned during this last ride, was a careful driver, indeed, for a Pornan.
"Ah. The Terrestrials," he greeted them. "Sit down." Terruns waved them to a seat with one hand. Thoughtfully, Penton noticed that Terruns' desk was of a rich, red wood finished with brightly chromium plated fixtures of quite familiar design.
"If," said Penton softly, "we don't find that ship in about three weeks we'll be gone, because we use food faster here. I've already eaten twice of those emergency rations."
"Feeding," acknowledged Blake unhappily, "but not filling. If you hear me grumble, it's my stomach, over which I'm losing all control. It is distinctly annoyed at what it righteously considers my perfidy. That one-inch lump of extinct sawdust, labeled 'one sirloin steak, 350 cal.', didn't fool it a bit. It's just as hungry as ever."
Penton nodded at a luscious-looking dark violet fruit that Terruns was toying with.
"If you ate that, Blake, your stomach would quiet down almost at once. Certainly within two hours. On Earth we mine ore that doesn't assay as high a mercury content as that thing has. Shut up and let me think."
"Why don't you rig up a radio doodle-bug?" suggested Blake. "The inductance of the ship should be darned easy to spot, and working the way they do with those-"
"Doodle-bugs are out," sighed Penton, "I thought of that. They're fine for finding buried metal, but they have two troubles here. Pornans broadcast power, which I have studied carefully while you were studying their ore-handling machinery. But they do not use radio methods. I gave Terruns complete data on radio. In six months or a year he'll make an effective radio tube, I'll bet.
"If you want to wait for that-in the meantime all our
tools are in the ship. The electrical field method doesn't
i
work because that requires an amplifier. The magnetic induction won't work till we are already so near you'd find it quicker with the rope method they use."
"Yes," sighed Penton, "but no ship." Blake turned to Terruns.
"How long will it take them to run that search out to that five mile circle?" he asked.
"Ah," said Terruns hesitantly, glancing at some sheets in front of him, "two months and three days, the last time. But more men this time. A month, perhaps? Not quick enough-I'm truly sorry, but you have no idea how annoying these creatures are to a decent, civilized-"
"Stomach," suggested Blake unhappily. "We're rapidly finding out. You've no idea how annoyed we'll be as we slowly starve to death. Oh, no idea."
Penton interrupted.
"Listen," he begged Blake, "will you eat that fruit over there and shut up one way or another? I'm trying to think. There must be some way-this thing's gone on too damned long now."
"Oh, yes, much," agreed Terruns. "We're doing all we can-"
"I know. We're not blaming you or your people." Penton grinned. "You are doing your damnedest, I realize, but the thing's senseless. There must be some way to stop them. This world of yours is too monotonous for your own good. Always warm, everywhere. Always light, every-yeah. So it is. Sweet-Terruns!"
Suddenly Penton jumped out of his seat with all the speed of a Pornan, his hand flashing back to his pack. Abruptly his hand was leveling a short, leased tube at Terruns' startled face. The Pornan first bent back in his chair hastily in startled amazement, then, thinking the tube a weapon, his hand darted out like a striking snake to twist the cold, crystalline eye of the tube away from him.
Penton dropped his tube with a howl of pain and leaped back, shaking his hand, but grinning sheepishly.
"Sorry, Terruns, must have startled you," he apologized.
"Look-it's harmless-just a light." Again he picked up the tube, in his left hand this time, and turned it on Blake. The brilliant light beam of his atomic flashlight stabbed sharply into Blake's face forcing him to blink, squinting until his eyes became adjusted.
"Yes," said Terruns, uncertainly. "Most-er-confusing. Your thoughts are not at all clear."
Penton turned the beam of light into Terruns' face. The Pornan shut his eyes at once, throwing a hand up to his face.
"It's very brilliant, uncomfortably so. Could you turn-turn it somewhere else-oh. Yes, turn it away."
Penton turned away the light with a sigh of relief.
"That, Terruns, is all I want to know. Look, take these, and make 'em fit somehow. And come on, we're due for some good hunting." Penton passed over a pair of space goggles, and reluctantly Terruns adjusted them to his face.
"It's an unpleasant sensation," he told the explorers. "But, yes, I think, my friend, that you have solved, with your other-world mind a long outstanding problem. Just one moment and we will be on our way. Oh, do you have another pair for my friend, Drunath, a very excellent gentleman? Spent his life finding quicker ways to kill krull. Just down the hall-"
Blake passed over his set of space goggles in blank wonderment. Presently the four started down, and out of the building, into a side street that Terruns recommended for a test. The test was wholly inconclusive.
"The park," said Drunath slowly, "is always infested with krull. There is a' wood, a group of trees, that has not been properly searched in fifty years. Ropes cannot be used. Shall we go there?"
Half an hour later, cars had deposited them, together with a troop of Drunath's extermination squad. Penton and Blake, for the first time, had an opportunity to walk through the spot where the ship should have been, a remembered swale between a little hillock of pink turf and a vine-covered out-thrust of black, glistening rock. It rose some hundred feet to