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

unemployment because death was in the air. There had not been so much as a firecracker set off, but the
United States faltered in its stride and its life came almost to a standstill because of the imminence of
atomic war.

BUT the owners of roadside taverns grew rich, and county fairs flourished, and roller-coaster
proprietors bought new diamonds, and—dirt-track auto races in small towns were thronged with
patrons. And Bud Gregory followed the dirt-track races. He had a trick that brought in plenty of money,
nowadays. Plenty! Ten, fifteen, sometimes even twenty dollars in a single day, and without his doing a tap
of work. He sat in blissful somnolence beside his antique car. His children brought him beer. Now and
again he sent one of them to make a small bet.
Bud Gregory, who was the only hope of the survival of the American way of life, loafed blissfully,
dozed contentedly, idled magnificently, and drank beer comfortably. He did not lift a finger unnecessarily
from one day's end to another.
It was purest accident that, as civilization toppled in America, newspaper clippings reached Murfree
which told him where Bud Gregory was.
He got a plane-ride to California by a combination of luck and desperation. On the way West he
read and re-read the three newspaper clippings on which he believed the fate of the United States
depended. One was an account of the impossible ride of an ancient jalopy through Los Angeles traffic at
ninety miles an hour. The reporter who wrote it didn't believe it himself.
One was a digest of tall tales current among motor tourists, of a mysterious mechanic roaming the
highways and performing miraculous repairs for ridiculously low prices. It was a feature-story, suggesting
that motor-tramps were devising a legendary figure who would some day rival Paul Bunyan.
But the third was the important one. That told of a dirt-track automobile race in which the winner
made absolutely unparalleled time, averaging three laps to the field's two, and achieving turns that even
those who saw them didn't believe.
Murfee knew better than the eyewitnesses what had happened in all three cases. Bud Gregory had
made his way across the continent in a car which should have fallen apart in the first ten miles. He was
using that outrageous gift of his to keep from working. And no more than four clays before Murfree
boarded a plane in Washington, he'd been somewhere near the dirt race-track at Palo Bajo, in
California.
Murfree made for that place as fast as wangled passage on an Army plane could take him. He was
lucky. There was a major-general on board, with a date with a blonde at Laguna Beach. The plane made
only two stops between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
But Los Angeles, which had been thriving a week before, was nine-tenths deserted when Murfree
arrived. Trains ran irregularly and buses practically not at all, and those which did run were scenes of riot
as they loaded up.
Murfree spent seventy-five dollars of very hard-saved cash for a ride behind a motor-cyclist to a
town ten miles from Palo Bajo. He trudged the rest of the way.
The open country was thickly populated and every roadside tree shaded a group of campers from
the cities. But there was an extraordinary holiday air everywhere. Murfree was acutely conscious of it as
he trudged along the highways with his single hand-bag for luggage.
Since bombs were apt to fall on the cities at any time there were camps and bivouacs of city people
everywhere. But since none had fallen so far—and would not fall except on cities—there was a general
effect of slightly apprehensive vacationing.
When Murfree trudged wearily into Palo Bajo his feet burned, his shoulders ached, and the muscles
of his arms were sore from the unaccustomed labor of carrying a burden. He was worn out and dispirited
but he went doggedly to the fairgrounds where the dirt-track races went on.
He went to the pits where the small, souped-up cars were serviced. He felt that there was no time to
rest, and anyhow his appearance in an exhausted condition was in line with his plan for locating Bud
Gregory. He went to the first pit, where a particularly greasy and especially dilapidated small racing-car