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

Commander Garry laid a restraining hand on his heavy shoulder. "Wait a minute, Connant. I want to get this straight. I agree that there is going to be no thawing
of this thing if there is the remotest chance of its revival. I quite agree it is much too unpleasant to have alive, but I had no idea there was the remotest
possiblity."


Dr. Copper pulled his pipe from between his teeth and heaved his stocky, dark body from the bunk he had been sitting in. "Blair's being technical. That's dead. As
dead as the mammoths they find frozen in Siberia. Potential life is like atomic energy -there, but nobody can get it out, and it certainly won't release itself
except in rare cases, as rare as radium in the chemical analogy. We have all sorts of proof that things don't live after being frozen -not even fish, generally
speaking -and no proof that higher animal life can under any circumstances. What's the point, Blair?


The little biologist shook himself. The little ruff of hair standing out around his bald pate waved in righteous anger. "The point is," he said in an injured
tone, "that the individual cells might show the characteristics they had in life, if it is properly thawed. A man's muscle cells live many hours after he has died.
Just because they live, and a few things like hair and a fingernail cells still live, you wouldn't accuse a corpse of being a Zombie, or something.


"Now if I thaw this right, I may have a chance to determine what sort of world it's native to. We don't, and can't know by any other means, whether it came from
Earth or Mars or Venus or from beyond the stars.


"And just because it looks unlike men, you don't have to accuse it of being evil, or vicious or something. Maybe that expression on its face is its equivalent to a
resignation to fate. White is the color of mourning to the Chinese. If men can have different customs, why can't a so-different race have different
understandings of facial expressions?"


Connant laughed softly, mirthlessly. "Peaceful resignation! If that is the best it could do in the way of resignation, I should exceedingly dislike seeing it when it
was looking mad. That face was never designed to express peace. It just didn't have any philosophical thoughts like peace in its make-up.


"I know it's your pet -but be sane about it. That thing grew up on evil, adolesced slowly roasting alive the local equivalent of kittens, and amused itself
through maturity on new and ingenious torture."


"You haven't the slightest right to say that," snapped Blair. "How do you know the first thing about the meaning of a facial expression inherently inhuman? It may
well have no human equivalent whatever. That is just a different development of Nature, another example of Nature's wonderful adaptability. Growing on another
planet, perhaps harsher world, it has different form and features. But it is just as much a legitimate child of Nature as you are. You are displaying the childish
human weakness of hating the different. On its own world it would probably class you as a fish-belly, white monstrosity with an insufficient number of eyes and a
fungoid body pale and bloated with gas. Just because its nature is different, you
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haven't any right to say it's necessarily evil."
Norris burst out a single, explosive, "Haw!" He looked down at the thing. "It may be that things from other worlds don't have to be evil just because they're
different. But that thing was! Child of Nature, eh? Well, it was a hell of an evil Nature."


"Aw, will you mugs cut crabbing at each other and get the damned thing off my table?" Kinner growled. "And put a canvas over it. It looks indecent."
"Kinner's gone modest," jeered Connant.
Kinner slanted his eyes up to the big physicist. The scarred cheek twisted to join the line of his tight lips in a twisted grin. "All right, big boy, and what were