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

A tentacle sprouted a savage talon -and cripsed in the flame. Steadily McReady moved with a planned, gim campaign. Helpless, maddened, the Thing retreated from
the grunting torch, the caressing, licking tongue. For a moment it rebelled, squalling in inhuman hatred at the touch of icy snow. Then it fell back before the
charring breath of the torch, the stench of its flesh bathing it. Hopelessly it retreated -on and on across the Antarctic snow. The bitter wind swept over it
twisting the torch-tongue; vainly it flopped, a trail of oily, stinking smoke bubbling away from it -McReady


walked back toward the shack silently. Barclay met him at the door. "No more?" the giant meteorologist asked grimly.
Barclay shook his head. "No more. It didn't split?"
"It had other things to think about," McReady assured him. "When I left it, it was a glowing coal. What was it doing?"


Norris laughed shortly. "Wise boys, we are. Smash magnetos, so planes won't work. Rip the boiler tubing out of the tractors. And leave that Thing alone for a week
in this shack. Alone and undisturbed."


McReady looked in at the shack more carefully. The air, despite the ripped door, was hot and humid. On a table at the far end of the room rested a thing of coiled
wires and small magnets, glass tubing and radio tubes. At the center, a block of rough stone rested. From the center of the block came the light that flooded the
place, the fiercely blue light bluer than the glare of an electric arc, and from it came the sweetly soft hum. Off to one side was another mechanism of crystal
glass, blown with an incredible neatness and delicacy, metal plates and a queer, shimmery sphere of insubstantiality.


"What is that?" McReady moved nearer.
Norris grunted. "Leave it for investigation. But I can guess pretty well. That's atomic power. That stuff to the left -that's a neat little thing for doing what
men have been trying to do with 100-ton cyclotrons and so forth. It separates neutrons from heavy water, which he was getting from the surrounding ice."


"Where did he get all -Oh. Of course. A monster couldn't be locked in -or out. He's been through the apparatus caches." McReady stared at the apparatus. "Lord,
what minds that race must have -"


"The shimmery sphere -I think it's a sphere of pure force. Neutrons can pass through any matter, and he wanted a supply reservoir of neutrons. Just project
neutrons against silica, calcium, beryllium, almost anything, and the atomic energy is released. That thing is the atomic generator."


McReady plucked a thermometer from his coat. "It's 120 degrees in here, despite the open door. Our clothes have kept the heat out to an extent, but I'm sweating
now."


Norris nodded. "The light's cold. I found that. But it gives off heat to warm the place through that coil. He had all the power in the world. He could keep it warm
and pleasant, as his race thought of warmth and pleasantness. Did you notice the light, the color of it?"


McReady nodded. "Beyond the stars is the answer. From beyond the stars. From a hotter planet that circled a brighter, bluer sun they came."
McReady glanced out the door toward the blasted, smoke-stained trail that flopped and wandered blindly off across the drift. "There won't be any more coming, I
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guess. Sheer accident it landed here, and that was twenty million years ago. What did it do all that for?" He nodded toward the apparatus.
Barclay laughed softly. "Did you notice what it was working on when we came? Look." He pointed toward the ceiling of the shack.
Like a knapsack made of flattened coffee-tins, with dangling cloth straps and leather belts, the mechanism clung to the ceiling. A tiny, glaring heart of