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

slouch hat on the corner of the bench back. In his iron-gray hair, the sun
picked out reddish glints. His gaze, which might have been designed especially
for precision squirrel-shooting, wandered down a path that curved along the
park lake.
Ed Dukas found him a fascinating mixture of old romance and comedy,
artfully concealing the most recent of wonders, the dark channels of which
held the potentials of great centuries to come, or mindless silence after
destruction. The treachery was not in Abel Freeman himself but in the fact of
his being.
Ed's mouth was dry. "You're honest, Mr. Freeman," he said.
Abel Freeman answered this with a nod and a shrug. "Funny," he drawled.
"Thought I saw a young feller I was sort of expecting. A congenial enemy, name
of Tom Granger. Look, suppose you three sidekicks of mine get on your feet
nice and easy, and walk the other way on that path. It would be safer. Not too
far just a piece."
This might have been an armed robber's command, but Ed sensed that it
was nothing like that. Without a word, he led Les and Barbara away.
There was a blinding, blue-white flash. The bench on which they'd been
sitting was gone -- vaporized by fearful heat. Incandescent vapors rose from a
big hole in the turf. When condensed and solidified, they would show little
flecks of gold transmuted from soil. These were the effects of the familiar
Midas Touch pistol. It used lighter atoms to form heavier ones, while it
converted a little of the total mass into energy.
Freeman must have leaped away at just the right instant to avoid
destruction. With astonishing agility, he was pursuing his intended murderer.
As Freeman sprang to the youth's shoulders, they both fell in a heap on the
walk and slid to a stop. Freeman's hand flicked, and the weapon flew into the
bushes.
By then Ed and Barbara and Les were standing over the prone forms.
Freeman was unruffled.
"Friends," he said, laughing, "meet up with a young one with a sharp
viewpoint and lots of guts in his own way. Yep, Tom Granger.
Granger was panting heavily. His mass of black hair streamed down over
his thin face. He looked scarcely older than Ed or Les, but these days that,
meant little. In repose, his large, dark eyes might have been limpid and
idealistic; now they flashed fury. His shabbiness was affected. Certainly, in
this era, there were no reasons for poverty.
Now he began to struggle again, in Freeman's grasps futilely, of
course. "Yes, I have guts!" he declared. "I wanted to destroy you, Freeman --
with whatever means that are left that can still accomplish that with things
like you! I wanted the incident to get into the newscast -- yes, to give me
public attention. And not for any stupid vanity, but for the best purpose
there ever was. I wanted a chance to be listened to, while I tell what
everyone must have begun to sense by now. Damn you, Freeman! Let me up!"
Abel Freeman smirked indulgently and obliged.




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