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

was being worked on by two besmeared individuals.
"Look!" said Murfree heavily, "I've got to find a good mechanic. My car's stalled ten miles back. It
ran dry and heated up and froze. I can't get a garage to touch it. They're jammed!"

THE last was true. With every car in California on the road and out of the cities, rural garagemen
rubbed their hands in fiendish glee. It was so everywhere. One of these two men looked up gloomily;
"We're busy!"
"But I've got to get my car fixed," .said Murfree desperately. "Five bucks if you just tell me where to
find a mechanic who'll do the job!"
One of the two got up and pointed.
"Try Mose," he said sourly. "That beefy-looking guy over there. He's bound to be some mechanic
because the car he's got ain't any better than this one, and it goes faster and makes turns no car has a
right to make. He watches it night and day—blast him—and you won't get nowhere, but you can talk to
him."
Murfree handed over five dollars. He limped toward the shed that had been pointed out. A bulky
man with squint eyes reared up as he approached. A grease-monkey I looked at him suspiciously.
"No visitors!" the big man snarled. "Clear out!"
"I've got a car in a ditch," said Murfree, "and the motor's frozen. I'll pay a hundred bucks for a
mechanic to fix it."
"Beat it!" repeated the beefy man, formidably.
"I'll pay you ten bucks if you'll name a mechanic," said Murfree. "I can pay a hundred for fixing it."
He had barely two hundred dollars in the world, and this man was not Bud Gregory. But Murfree
was sure he was on the right track. A car that went impossibly fast and made impossible turns. His own
car, of course, was imaginary, but he looked worn-out and dusty and very convincing.
The grease-monkey said, drawling: "That fella could do it, Mose, and ten bucks'd come in handy."
"He'll do it for fifty," the squint-eyed man said shrewdly. "I get fifty or he don't do nothing. Take it or
leave it." He turned to the grease-monkey. "You know where to find 'im."
Murfree handed over fifty dollars. He felt weak at the knees. It was enormously important to find
Bud Gregory. Nobody else in the world would do!
The grease-monkey came back with Bud Gregory, who looked at Murfree.
"Howdy," Gregory said in an unhappy voice, and looked uneasily around for policemen. Murfree
swallowed.
"Hello, Bud. I want to talk to you. Anywhere you say. How about some beer?"

CHAPTER III
Three Racketeers

INSTANTLY Bud Gregory brightened. He was tall and gangling and drooping. He was typically
poor-white—Appalachian Highland version—bony and listless. He had worn an air of complacency until
he saw Murfree, but that was gone now because he'd made a device which was a neutron-shield and set
a monstrous atomic pile to work back in the Smoky Mountains.
Murfree was the man who had found out his responsibility for the devastation which resulted. But on
the other hand, Murfree had paid him six hundred dollars for a device which absolutely abolished friction,
and with that as capital he had set out to tour the United States without being bothered by detectives, and
practically without working.
"Why—uh—sure, Mr. Murfree," said the man who knew by instinct all the things that the scientists of
the world struggled to learn. "Beer? Sure! There's a place right close, Mr. Murfree. But I cain't go fur.
There's some fellas comin' to see me today. They told me if I'd fix a dinkus for 'em, they'd pay me wages
for as long as it works, without me doin' a tap of work more."
Murfree looked at him in envy so great that it was almost hatred. Bud Gregory knew, without