"Murray Leinster - The Mutant Weapon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

tissue sample at all! He arrived where we found him while he was strong enough to eat, and he
stayed where there was good food, and he ate it, and he digested it, and he died of starvation:
Why?"
Murgatroyd wriggled unhappily, because Calhoun's tone was accusing. He said, "Chee!" in a subdued
tone of voice. He looked pleadingly up at Calhoun.
"I'm not angry with you," Calhoun told him, "but dammit-"
He packed the lab kit back into his pack, which contained food for the two of them for about a
week.
"Come along!" he said bitterly. He started off. Ten minutes


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later he stopped. "What I said was impossible. But it happened, so it mustn't have been what I
said. I must have stated it wrongly. He could eat, because he did. He did eat, because of the cobs
left. He did digest it. So why did he die of starvation? Did he stop eating?"
"Cheel" said Murgatroyd with conviction.
Calhoun grunted and marched on once more. The man had not died of a disease, not directly. The
tissue analysis gave a picture of death which denied that it came of any organ ceasing to
function. Was it the failure of the organism-the man-to take the action required for living? Had
he stopped eating?
Calhoun's mind skirted the notion warily. It was not plausible. The man had been able to feed
himself and had done so. Anything which came upon him and made him unable to feed himself ...
"He was a city man," growled Calhoun, "and this is a damned long way from the city. What was he
doing out here, anyhow?"
He hesitated and tramped on again. A city man found starved in a remote place might have become
lost, somehow or other. But if this man was lost, he was assuredly not without food. '
"He belonged in the city," said Calhoun vexedly, "and he left it. The city's almost but not quite
empty. Our would-be murderers are in it. This is a new colony. There was a city to be built and
fields to be plowed and planted, and then a population was to come here from Dettra Two. The
city's built and the fields are plowed and planted. Where's the population?"
•He scowled thoughtfully at the ground before him. Murgatroyd tried to scowl too, but he wasn't
very successful.
"What's the answer, Murgatroyd? Did the man come away from the city because he had a disease? Was
he driven out?"
"Chee," said Murgatroyd without conviction.
"I don't know either," admitted Calhoun. "He walked out into the middle of that field and then
stopped walking. He was hungry and he ate. He digested. He stayed there for days. Why? Was he
waiting to die of something? -Presently
he stopped eating. He died. What made him leave the city? What made him stop ^eating? Why did he
die?"
Murgatroyd investigated a small plant and decided that it was not interesting. He came back to
Calhoun.
"He wasn't killed," said Calhoun, "but somebody tried to kill us-somebody who's in the city now.
That man could have come out here to keep from being killed by the same people. Yet he died
anyhow. Why'd they want to kill him? Why'd they want to kill us? Because we were a. Med Ship?
Because they didn't want Med Service to know there was a disease here? Ridiculous!"
"Chee," said Murgatroyd.
"I don't like the looks of things," said Calhoun. "For instance, in any ecological system there