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

the hope of finding how long since it had received attention. In his examination, he found the
dead man.
As a corpse, the man was brand new, and Calhoun very carefully put himself into a strictly medical
frame of mind before he bent over for a technical estimate of what had happened, and when. The
dead man seemed to have died of hunger. He was terribly emaciated, and he didn't belong in a
cultivated field far from the city. By his garments he was a city dweller and a prosperous one. He
wore the jewels
which nowadays indicated a man's profession and status in it much more than the value of his
possessions. There was money in his pockets, and writing materials, a wallet with pictures and
identification, and the normal oddments a man would carry. He'd been a civil servant of the city.
And he shouldn't have died of starvation.
He especially shouldn't have gone hungry here! The sweet maize plants were tall and green. Their
ears were ripe. He hadn't gone hungry! There were the inedible remains of at least two dozen sweet
maize ears. They had been eaten some time-some days-ago, and one had been left unfinished. If the
dead man had eaten them but was unable to digest them, his belly should have been swollen with
undigested food. It wasn't. He'd eaten and digested and still had died, at least largely of
inanition. Calhoun scowled.
"How about this corn, Murgatroyd?" he demanded. He reached up and broke off a half-yard-long ear.
He stripped away the protecting, stringy leaves. The soft grains underneath looked appetizing.
They smelled like good fresh food. Calhoun offered the ear to Murgatroyd.
The little formal took it in his paws and on the instant was eating it with gusto.
"If you keep it down, he didn't die of eating it," said Calhoun, frowning. "And if he ate it-which
he did-he didn't die of starvation. Which he did."
He waited. Murgatroyd consumed every grain upon the oversized cob. His furry belly distended a
little. Calhoun offered him a second ear. He set to work on that, too, with self-evident
enjoyment.
"In all history," said Calhoun, "nobody's ever been able to poison one of you tormals because of
your digestive system has a qualitative analysis unit in it that yells bloody murder if anything's
likely to disagree with you. As a probability of tormal reaction, you'd have been nauseated before
now if that stuff wasn't good'to eat."
But Murgatroyd ate until he was distinctly pot-bellied. He left a few grains on the second ear
with obvious regret. He put it down carefully on the ground. He shifted his left-
hand whiskers with his paw and elaborately licked them clean. He did the same to the whiskers" on
the right-hand side of his mouth. He said comfortably:
"Cheer
"Then that's that," Calhoun told him. "This man didn't die of starvation. I'm getting queasy!"
He had his lab kit in his shoulder pack, of course. It was an absurdly small outfit, with almost
microscopic instruments. But in Med Ship field work the techniques of microanalysis were standard.
Distastefully, Calhoun took the tiny tissue sample from which he could gather necessary
information. Standing, he ran through the analytic process that seemed called for. When he
finished, he buried the dead man as well as he could and started off in the direction of the.city
again. He scowled as he walked.
He journeyed for nearly half an hour before he spoke. Murgatroyd accompanied him on all fours now
because of his heavy meal. After a mile and a half, Calhoun stopped and said grimly:
"Let's check you over, Murgatroyd."
He verified the format's pulse and respiration and temperature. He put a tiny breath sample
through the part of the lab kit which read off a basic metabolism rate. The small animal was quite
accustomed to the process. He submitted blandly. The result of the checkover was that Murgatroyd
the tormal was perfectly normal.
"But," said Calhoun angrily, "that man died of starvation! There was practically no fat in the