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

"But, Kinner, this is the only table in Big Magnet that's big enough to work on," Blair objected. "Everybody's explained that."
"Yeah, and everybody's brought everything in here. Clark brings his dogs every time there's a fight and sews them up on that table. Ralsen brings in his sledges.
Hell, the only thing you haven't had on that table is the Boeing. And you'd 'a had that in if you coulda figured a way to get it through the tunnels."


Commander Garry chuckled and grinned at Van Wall, the huge Chief Pilot. Van Wall's great blonde beard twitched suspiciously as he nodded gravely to Kinner. "You're
right, Kinner. The aviation department is the only that treats you right."


"It does get crowded, Kinner," Garry acknowledged. "But I'm afraid we all find it that way at times. Not much privacy in an Antarctic camp."


"Privacy? What the hell's that? You know, the thing that really made me weep, was when I saw Barclay marchin' through here chantin' 'The last lumber in the camp!
The last lumber in the camp! ' and carryin' it out to build that house on his tractor. Damn it, I missed that moon cut in the door he carried out more'n I
missed the sun when it set. That wasn't just the last lumber Barclay was walkin' off with. He was carryin' off the last bit of privacy in this blasted place."


A grin rode on Connant's heavy face as Kinner's perennial good-natured grouch came up again. But it died away quickly as his dark, deep-set eyes turned again to the
red-eyed thing Blair was chipping from its cocoon of ice. A big hand ruffed his shoulder-length hair, and tugged at a twisted lock. "Going to be too crowded if I
have to sit up with that thing," he growled. "Why can't you go on chipping the ice away from around it -you can do that without anybody butting in, I assure you -and
then hang the thing up over the power-plant boiler? That's warm enough. It'll thaw out a chicken, even a whole side of beef in a few hours."


"I know," Blair protested, dropping the tack hammer to gesture more effectively with his bony, freckled fingers, his small body tense with eagerness, "but this is
too important to take any chances. There never was a find like this; there never can be again. It's the only chance men will ever have, and it has to be done
exactly right."


"Look, you know how the fish we caught down near the Ross Sea would freeze almost as soon as we got them on deck, and come to life again if we thawed them gently?
Low forms of life aren't killed by quick freezing and slow thawing. We have -"


"Hey, for the love of Heaven -you mean that dammned thing will come to life!" Connant yelled. "You get the damned thing -Let me at it! That's going to be in so
many pieces -"


"NO! No, you fool..." Blair jumped in front of Connant to protect his precious
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find. "No. Just low forms of life. For Pete's sake let me finish. You can't thaw higher forms of life and have them come to. Wait a moment now -hold it! A fish
can come to after freezing because it's so low a form of life that the individual cells of its body can revive, and that alone is enough to re-establish life. Any
higher forms thawed out that way are dead. Though the individual cells revive, they die because there must be organization and cooperative effort to live. That
cooperation cannot be re-established. There is a sort of potential life in any uninjured, quick-frozen animal. But it can't -can't under any circumstances -become
active life in higher animals. The higher animals are too complex, too delicate. This is an intelligent creature as high in its evolution as we are in
ours. Perhaps higher. It is as dead as a frozen man would be."


"How do you know?" demanded Connant, hefting the ice-axe he had seized a moment before.