"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

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 Eddie and his mother explored the house and found it mostly intact.
Then incident piled on incident in quick succession. The first of these began
with a whimper at the door. Masked with respirators against possible
radioactive taints in the outside air, they opened it. A blackened thing
without eyes dragged itself inside, quivered once, and lay still. It was death
among supposed immortals. The passing of a dachshund called Schnitz.
Eddie was dazed. Child-grief or man-grief had no chance to come to him
then. Events moved too fast. There was too much to be done.
A half-dozen people in radiation armor came into the house. At once it
was converted into a first-aid station. Hard law and hard drills, blueprinted
long before for disaster, came into play. Eddie's mother joined the crew. Nor
was he left out of it. There was coffee for him to prepare in the kitchen, and
rugs and furniture to be cleared away, and equipment to be set up.
He saw blood and death, and hysteria-twisted faces. He saw glinting,
complex instruments and apparatus, as the therapeutic methods of the age were
applied. There were blood pumps that could serve as hearts and machines to
duplicate the functions of kidneys and lungs. There were devices to teleport
scattered body cells from a dozen healthy individuals, converting them briefly
into mobile energy, and then back into living tissue in the body of an injured
person.
Mostly the maimed and burned remained stolid and calm. Luxury had not
weakened them. They too, had known their era and had had some preparation.
Eddie recognized a child of his own age among those who came into his
own house: a neighbor boy named Les Payten, the son of a noted biologist. He
had big ears and a freckled nose. He wasn't hurt badly. His eyes were
inflamed. He hadn't shut them quite quickly enough. He had turned sullen, and
his lip trembled a bit. Otherwise he was still full of pepper. "Braggin' about
your Uncle Mitch now, Eddie?" he taunted. "Great stuff, that guy! He and his
pal scientists nearly got us all. Better luck next time, huh?"
Young Ed Dukas might have growled back but he did not. As if he too
carried a burden of responsibility, his jaw hardened and his cheeks hollowed.
His back stiffened, as if to bear the load. He returned to the kitchen. He had
not yet noticed any other signs of blame. It was too soon. The shock of cosmic
catastrophe had deadened minds. Sometimes prejudice and hatred need a certain
leisurely brooding to build them up.
But another raw realization had come to Eddie. As soon as there was a
moment to speak to his mother he said, "Uncle Mitch was supposed to land in
the City spaceport tonight. It's a six-hour run from the Moon. But now he'll
never get here."
She shook her head. And in her expression there was fury mixed with her
sadness.
He didn't think about that very long as he helped carry a stretcher.
His mind was on Mitchell Prell -- grinning, setting up a lab in the room
upstairs, even modeling wax with his swift fingers. He had once molded little
heads of Mom and Dad. A lump gathered in Eddie's throat for someone who would