"Edmond Hamilton - Murder in the Void" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

AN SF CLASSIC
MURDER IN THE VOID
EDMOND HAMILTON
An Alien Vandal Seeks Control of the Strangest Scientific Weapon Known to Man!

(This issue's classic is a rip-roaring example of purple prosed space opera from
the June 1938 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories and is by the acknowledged king of
the genre, Edmond Hamilton. Blurbs are from the orginal magazine printing.)
 CHAPTER I
CRANE OF THE TSS
The black, moonless Venus night lay solid over the big metal house and its
surrounding grounds. The young Earthman who was creeping stealthily through
clumps of weird shrubbery and enormous flowers toward the house thanked heaven
fervently for the cloudy planet's stygian nights.
But Rab Crane knew that it was deadly dangerous approaching the house of
Doctor Alph, even under cover of darkness. For the Venusian scientist's home had
become a focus of interplanetary intrigue in the last few weeks. Every splanet in the
System had heard the rumor of Doctor Alph's discovery of a tremendous new
scientific weapon. And every one of them had agents trying to secure it. There
would be guards inside the house, without doubt.
Crane's bronzed, aquiline face tensed as he crouched for a moment beside a stiff,
grotesque shrub. As a member of the Terrestrial Secret Service he had been sent by
the TSS to get Doctor Alph's secret weapon and he'd do it or die trying.
Not a light showed from anywhere in the dark, square metal house.
"Too quiet," muttered Crane to himself. "Looks like a trap."
He shifted his stubby beam-pistol to his left hand, and with his right drew a
compact little instrument from his pocket. Then he moved silently on toward the
dark house.
"Here goes nothing," he whispered. "In two minutes I'll probably rate a nice
memorial plaque at headquarters.
Like a sliding shadow, Crane flattened against the side of the house, just beneath a
window. He reached up with the little oval instrument he held.
It was a recorder which registered the presence anywhere nearby of invisible
watchmen," those diabolically ingenious combinations of electric eyes and atomic
beams, effective alarms that blasted down intruders without warning.
To Rab Crane's amazement, the recorder showed no such protective devices in
operation around the window. What did it mean? It looked to him like a deliberate
trap set by the Venusian scientist.
But he had to go through with it. Too late to back out now. He severed the catch
of the window by a single tiny, smothered flash from his beamgun. He rolled the
flexible glass quickly aside and drew himself rapidly up into the dark room. He
poised motionless in the dark, listening. The house was as silent as the grave. He
could not understand it but his instincts warned him of peril.
Soundlessly he moved across the dark room. He knew that Doctor Alph's
laboratory lay at the back of the house. There, if anywhere, he might find some clue
to the Venusian scientist's great discovery that had so perturbed the planetary
governments.
He watched his little recorder alertly as he advanced, expecting it each moment to
flash the tiny signal spark that would warn of a network of deadly beams ahead. But
it gave no signal. Apparently the whole web of the houses protective beams had