"Charles DeVet - Delayed Action" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeVet Charles)

paused nor looked back,
Johnson's stomach had drawn up into a tight knot now, and his head was beginning to feel light.
There was a faint ringing in his ears.
By the time he reached the end of the guide rope, nausea was creeping up from his stomach and into
his throat. This was as far as it was supposed to be safe to go; the advertising literature had it that here
was the point of no return. Up ahead his quarry was walking half doubled over, weaving back and forth,
as though he were intoxicated. But he did not pause.
Johnson turned to look back, and felt his breakfast fighting to come up. From his perspective, the
ground and the spectators watching him had swung to a position almost perpendicular to him. He felt that
he was about to slide off into space. A wave of vertigo swept over him, his legs folded and he fell to the
ground —sicker than he had ever been before in his life. Now he knew why the man ahead never looked
back.
For a moment Johnson wondered whether he should give up. But, even as he debated, tenacity
pulled him to his feet and forced him on.
And now something new was added to his vast discomfort. Tiny twinges of pain, like small electric
shocks, began shooting up his legs, increasing in intensity with each step he took. The pain built up until
the rusty taste of blood in his mouth told him that he had bitten into the flesh of his lower lip.
Johnson's only consolation now was the thought that the man ahead of him must be suffering worse
than he. At each step the pain increased its tempo, and the sound within his head grew to a battering
roar. Although he felt himself at the last frayed ends of his vitality, he managed to stagger on.
Abruptly he realized that he had very nearly overtaken the man ahead. Through eyes glazed with
pain, he saw the other, still standing, but swaying with agony and sickness. The man seemed to be
gathering his resources for some supreme effort.
He tottered ahead two more steps, threw himself forward—and disappeared!
If he paused now, Johnson knew he would never be able to move again. Only will power and
momentum carried him on. He stumbled and pitched forward. A searing pain traced a path through his
head and he felt himself falling.

HE was certain that he had never lost consciousness. The ground came up to meet him, and, with a
last effort, he twisted his right shoulder inward. His cheek slid along the dirt and he lay on his side without
strength. His legs pushed forward in a steady jerking movement as he fought to quiet his quivering
muscles.
Gradually a soothing lethargy bathed Johnson's body. His pains vanished, and the sickness left his
stomach.
But something was wrong—terribly wrong!
Slowly he climbed to his feet and stood looking about him. He was still on the narrow arm of the
Strip. On either side of him banks of white clouds, with the consistency of thick smoke, billowed and
curled about the Strip —but somehow they left its pathway clear.
Johnson shook his head. The wrongness, he guessed, was in his own mind. But he was unable to
determine what it was. Desperately he marshalled his scattered thoughts. Nothing. He took one groping
step in the direction from which he had come—and staggered back from a wall of pain as tangible as a
concrete structure.
He had no choice except to go forward. There was something he must do, he realized, but what was
it? With the question came the answer to what was troubling him.
His memory was gone!
Or, at least, a great gap had been torn through it as though carved out by a giant blade. Briefly,
despair threatened to overwhelm him.
"Hold it!" Johnson spoke aloud, and the words sobered him.
All fears became worse when not looked at. He had to bring this disaster out into the open where he
could face it; where he could assay the damage. He had always taken pride in having a logical mind, with