"Murray Leinster - The Best of Murray Leinster (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

A day later still, bumps appeared on the two masses. They grew, took
form and design, and twenty days after the beginning of the phenomenon were
legs, necks, and heads. Then two giraffes, both male, moved about the giraffe
enclosure. Each was slightly less than half the weight of the original animal.
They were identically marked. And they ate and moved and in every way seemed
normal though immature animals.
An exactly similar occurrence was reported from the Argentine Republic,
in which a steer from the pampas was going through the same extraordinary
method of reproduction under the critical eyes of Argentine scientists.
Nowadays it seems incredible that the scientists of 1935 should not have
understood the meaning of these oddities. We now know something of the type of
strain which produced them, though they no longer occur. But between January
and June of 1935 the news service's of the nation were flooded with items of
similar import.
For two days the Ohio River flowed upstream. For six hours the trees in
Euclid Park, in Cleveland, lashed their branches madly as if in a terrific
storm, though not a breath of wind was stirring. And in New Orleans, near the
last of May, fishes swam up out of the Mississippi River through the air,
proceeded to "drown" in the air which inexplicably upheld them, and then
turned belly up and floated placidly at an imaginary water level some fifteen
feet above the pavements of the city.
But it seems clear that Professor Minott was the only man In the world
who even guessed the - meaning of these_Lto us-clear-cut indications of the
later events. Professor Minott was instructor in mathematics on the faculty of
Robinson College in Fredericksburg, Va. We know that he anticipated very
nearly every one of the things which later startled and frightened the world,
and not only our world. But he kept his mouth shut.
Robinson College was small. It had even been termed a "jerkwater".
college without offending anybody but the faculty and certain sensitive
alumni. For a mere professor of mathematics to make public the theory Minott
had formed would not even be news. It would be taken as stark insanity.
Moreover, those who believed it would be scared. So he kept his mouth shut.
Professor Minott possessed courage, bitterness, and a certain cold-
blooded daring, but neither wealth nor influence. He had more than a little
knowledge of mathematical physics and his calculations show extraordinary
knowledge of the laws of probability, but he had very little patience with
problems in ethics. And he was possessed by a particularly fierce passion for
Maida Hayns, daughter of the professor of Romance languages, and had
practically no chance to win even her attention over the competition of most
of the student body. So much of explanation is necessary, because no one but
just such a person as Professor Minott would have forecast what was to happen
and then prepare for it in the fashion in which he did.
We know from his notes that he considered the probability of disaster as
a shade better than four to one. It is a very great pity that we do not have
his calculations. There is much that our scientists do not understand even
yet. The notes Professor Minott left behind have been invaluable, but there
are obvious gaps in them. He must have taken most of his notes-and those the
most valuable into that unguessed at place where he conceivably now lives and
very probably works.
He would be amused, no doubt, at the diligence with which his most