"Murray Leinster - The Nameless Something" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

A Bud Gregory Novelet
By
WILLIAM FITZGERALD

THE NAMELESS SOMETHING
When Atomic Destruction Threatens, the Call Goes Out for the Wizard of
the Great Smokies!

CHAPTER I
Jalopy With Wings

BUD GREGORY was something there isn't any word for. He bet on a dirt-track automobile race in
the State of Colorado, and won twelve dollars. Simultaneously, a certain European Power made a very
polite apology to the Icelandic Government for the falling of a rocket-projectile near Reykjavik. In so
doing, it advertised publicly that it had long-range guided missiles capable of flights of over two thousand
miles.
Next day, Bud Gregory bet on a second dirt-track race and won six dollars more. At very nearly the
same instant, Izvestia published a bellicose article which practically called for war on the United
States—UNO or no UNO—and a middle European nation offered a calculated, uncalled-for insult to its
United States ambassador. The day after, Bud Gregory sat in the bar of a motor-tourist camp and drank
beer contentedly all day long.
Two days later still, on a mountain highway in the Rockies, the driver of a sixteen-wheel Diesel truck
came booming to a sharp curve which had a cliff on one side and a four-hundred-foot drop on the other.
The truck thundered around that curve—and ran slap into a rattletrap car with a flapping fabric top
and an incredible load of children and household goods. Ran slap into it, that is, to the extent that a
collision was inevitable. The jalopy was on the wrong side of the road.
The truck could not turn out, nor the jalopy turn in, in time. So the truck-driver froze, and saw the
rattletrap vehicle swerve out still farther on the wrong side of the road—ride out until only its inner wheels
were on the highway and its outer wheels spun merrily over vacancy.
It should have toppled instantly and horribly, only it didn't. It rode exactly as if there were an invisible
highway surface over emptiness. The Diesel driver saw it swerve placidly back into the road behind him,
and go on. And he braked his monster truck to a stop and had a perfectly good fit of the shakes. He
made up his mind to take a week off to be spent in rest and quiet. He did.
On that day, it was said in Washington that a grave international crisis threatened, and eminent
statesmen went about in spectacular silence, refusing to speak for publication but privately tipping off
their favorite newspapermen to monstrous events due to occur.

ON YET another day Bud Gregory arrived at yet another place where further dirt-track automobile
racing was in progress, and attempted negotiations with a dejected driver who had not been in the money
for weeks. The driver laughed at him, bitterly, and Bud Gregory was indignant. He bet on the races and
lost two dollars.
On the same day, four satellite nations of a certain European Power revealed that for several months
they had been running atomic piles, and now had a sufficient stock of atomic bombs for their own
defense. The rest of the United Nations erupted into frenzied protests—which cut off short when they
realized it was too late to object.
And after three more days, Bud Gregory drove into Los Angeles in a car which was in the last stages
of dilapidation. It contained himself, his wife, and an indeterminate number of tow-haired children. Also it
contained two hound-dogs, several mattresses, many packages, innumerable parcels, had strapped-on
cots fastened to its running-boards, and was further festooned with gunnysacks containing stocks of
vegetables and canned foods.