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

"How the hell can these birds tell what they are voting on? They haven't seen those three red eyes, and that blue hair like crawling worms. Crawling -damn,
it's crawling there in the ice right now!


"Nothing Earth ever spawned had the unutterable sublimation of devastating wrath that this thing let loose in its face when it looked around this frozen desolation
twenty million years ago. Mad? It was mad clear through -searing, blistering mad!


"Hell, I've had bad dreams ever since I looked at those three red eyes. Nightmares. Dreaming the thing thawed out and came to life -that it wasn't dead,
or even wholly unconscious all those twenty million years, but just slowed, waiting -waiting. You'll dream, too, while that damned thing that Earth wouldn't
want is dripping, dripping in the Cosmos House tonight.


"And, Connant," Norris whipped toward the cosmic ray specialist, "won't you have fun sitting up all night in the quiet. Wind whining above -and that thing
dripping -." He stopped for a moment, and looked around.


"I know. That's not science. But this is, it's psychology. You'll have nightmares for a year to come. Every night since I looked at that thing I've had 'em. That's
why I hate it -sure I do -and don't want it around. Put it back where it came from and let it freeze for another twenty million years. I had some swell
nightmares -that it wasn't made like we are -which is obvious -but of a different kind of flesh that it can really control. That it can change its shape,
and look like a man -and wait to kill and eat -"


That's not a logical argument. I know it isn't. The thing isn't Earth-logic anyway.


"Maybe it has an alien body-chemistry, and maybe its bugs do have a different body-chemistry. A germ might not stand that, but, Blair and Copper, how about a
virus? That's just an enzyme molecule, you've said. That wouldn't need anything but a protein molecule of any body to work on.


"And how are you so sure that, of the million varieties of microscopic life it may have, none of them are dangerous? How about diseases like hydrophobia -rabies -that
attack any warm-blooded creature, whatever its body-chemistry may be? And parrot fever? Have you a body like a parrot, Blair? And plain rot -gangrene -necrosis,
do you want? That isn't choosy about body-chemistry!"


Blair looked up from his puttering long enough to meet Norris' angry, gray eyes for an instant. "So far the only thing you have said this thing gave off that was
catching was dreams. I'll go so far as to admit that." An impish, slightly malignant grin crossed the little man's seamed face. "I had some, too. So. It's
dream-infectious. No doubt an exceedingly dangerous malady.


"So far as your other things go, you have a badly mistake idea about viruses. In the first place, nobody has shown that the enyzyme-molecule theory, and that
alone, explains them. And in the second place, when you catch tobacco mosaic or
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wheat rust, let me know. A wheat plant is a lot nearer your body-chemistry than this other-world creature is.
"And your rabies is limited, strictly limited. You can't get it from, nor give it to, a wheat plant or a fish -which is a collateral descendant of a common
ancestor of yours. Which this, Norris, is not." Blair nodded pleasantly toward the tarpaulined bulk on the table.