"Campbell, John W Jr - Who Goes There" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"Are you sure that thing from hell is dead?" Dr. Copper asked softly.
"Yes, thank Heaven," the little biologist gasped. After they drove the dogs off, I stood there poking Bar's electrocution thing into it for five minutes. It's dead
and cooked."


"Then we can only give thanks that this is Antarctic, where there is not one, single, solitary, living thing for it to imitate, except these animals in camp."


"Us," Blair giggled. "It can imitate us. Dogs can't make four hundred miles to the sea; there's no food. There aren't any skua gulls to imitate at this season. There
aren't any penguins this far inland. There's nothing that can reach the sea from this point -except us. We've got brains. We can do it. Don't you see -it's got
to imitate us -it's got to be one of us -that's the only way it can fly an airplane -fly a plane for two hours, and rule -be -all Earth's inhabitants. A
world for the taking -if it imitates us!


"It didn't know yet. It hadn't had a chance to learn. It was rushed -hurried -took the thing nearest its own size. Look -I'm Pandora! I opened the box! And the
only hope that can come out is -that nothing can come out. You didn't see me. I did it. I fixed it. I smashed every magneto. Not a plane can fly. Nothing can
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fly." Blair giggled and lay down on the floor crying.
Chief Pilot Van Wall made a dive for the door. His feet were fading echoes in the corridors as Dr. Copper bent unhurriedly over the little man on the floor. From
his office at the end of the room he brought something, and injected a solution into Blair's arm. "He might come out of it when he wakes up," he sighed, rising.
McReady helped him lift the biologist onto a nearby bunk. "It all depends on whether we can convince him that thing is dead."


Van Wall ducked into the shack brushing his heavy blond beard absently. "I didn't think a biologist would do a thing like that thoroughly. He missed the spares in
the second cache. It's all right. I smashed them."


Commander Garry nodded. "I was wondering about the radio."
Dr. Copper snorted. "You don't think it can leak out on a radio wave, do you? You'd have five rescue attempts in the next three months if you stop the
broadcasts. The thing to do is talk loud and not make a sound. Now I wonder -"


McReady looked speculatively at the doctor. "It might be like an infectious disease. Everything that drank any of its blood -"


Copper shook his head. "Blair missed something. mitate it may, but it has to a certain extent, its own body-chemistry, its own metabolism. If it didn't, it would
become a dog -and be a dog and nothing more. It has to be an imitation dog. There you can detect it by serum test. And its chemistry, since it comes from another
world, must be so wholly, radically different that a few cells, such as gained by drops of blood, would be treated as disease germs by the dog, or human body."


"Blood -would one of those imitations bleed?" Norris demanded.
"Surely. Nothing mystic about blood. Muscle is about 90 percent water, blood differs only in having a couple percent more water, and less connective tissue.
They'd bleed all right," Copper assured him.


Blair sat up in his bunk suddenly. "Connant -where's Connant?"