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

been turned off at the main switch. But why?
***
 Crane moved quickly out of the room into an equally dark hall. In the hall he
tripped on something soft and recoiled, his gun-arm stiffening.
He heard no sound. In a moment he ventured to flash a tiny needle of light from a
ring on his finger, onto the floor. His breath sucked inward with a sharp hiss. A
Venusian house-guard lay there! One glance assured him the man was dead.
The man's neck had been broken cleanly, as though by a twist of powerful hands.
The marks of the killer's hands were still visible, red against the Venusian's milky
white skin. A beam-gun was still in his limp hand.
So, Rab Crane thought, someone else had visited Doctor Alph's house tonight,
ahead of him. Probably some other interplanetary spy trying to get the Venusian
scientist's deadly secret for his own world just as Crane was trying to get it for
Earth.
Had the other spy got it?
Crane's heart went cold with apprehension at the thought. He straightened from
examining the dead guard and moved quietly down the dark hall. He had no fear of
the beam-web now. He realized that whoever had been ahead of him had cut off the
whole protective system.
He went around a corner of the hall and almost stepped on two more dead
Venusians. They, too, had been strangled by clutching fingers that had snapped
their necks like pipe-stems. Why hadn't they beamed the killer with their guns when
he attacked them?
The door of the laboratory was wide open. Inside, all was dark and deadly still.
But instinct warned Crane against showing a light as he stepped into the room. He
stopped, his eyes trying to penetrate the darkness. Then a smell came to him that
made the heir rise along the back of his neck.
The smell of fresh blood! It came from the darkness at his right. Crane flicked
on the tiny ray of his ring-light, swung its beam to the floor. Another body! And
one glance at the distorted face told him who it was.
The Venusian scientist's neck had been broken like those of the guards. But his
head had been smashed also into a bloody red mass. His massive face,
comparatively undamaged, stared upward in the beam of light, horribly contorted.
Then Rab Crane's stunned mind perceived something and instantly comprehended
its pressing significance. The blood pool from the shattered skull of Doctor Alph
was still widening along the floor! That meant that it had been no more than a few
moments since the killer had been there!
The killer must still be in the house! Rab doused his little light and sprang to his
feet. But the realization had come too late.
In the darkness behind him a harsh voice said, "Kill him!"
A black shape became a moving shadow in the darkness. With swift, heavy
strides it approached. Then a hard fist struck for Rab Crane's skull in a terrific
blow, even as he ducked. Only the lightning, instinctive swerve of the TSS man
saved him from instant death. As it was, the blow grazed his temple. He reeled,
falling stunned, but his senses did not leave him immediately.
As consciousness receded from him, Crane heard, as though in a dream, a voice
saying rapidly:
"Quick! To the Vulcan now! I'll carry the braincase!"
 Then a hurry of receding steps, and a harsh voice gloating, mirthfully, in the
distance, "When they find the dead Earthman there beside Doctor Alph, they'll think