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

knowing how he knew, how to make absolutely anything he chose. He'd made a wire that absorbed heat
and turned it into electricity, but he'd done it to save the trouble of mending an automobile radiator in the
normal manner, and he had charged just ten dollars for the job.
Bud Gregory had made a shield through which nothing could pass, not even a neutron —and he'd
done it to save himself the trouble of replacing that miraculous wire with a tedious job of sheet-metal
soldering on the same radiator. He'd made another device, at Murfree's demand, which stopped even
neutrons cold—after the shield had started an unshielded atomic pile to work. Gregory could weld
broken parts of a motor without taking them out, and could free a frozen motor without so much as
loosening a bolt, and lots of other things. But all he wanted was to sit in absolute somnolence and
inactivity.
"Come on and get the beer," said Murfree. "I came all the way across the continent to find you.
Something's happened that you can fix, and it'll square everything about that business back in the
Smokies." He added, "There aren't any detectives with me."
Bud Gregory shambled beside him, frowning.
"Listen, Mr. Murfree," he said uneasily, "I don't want no truck with sheriffs and policemen. I don't
even want to square nothin' with 'em. I just want to get along without workin' myself to death, not
botherin' nobody and nobody botherin' me."
Murfree ushered him into a tavern opposite the race-track where the souped-up racers ran. "The
point is that somebody is bothering you," said Murfree. "And me. And everybody else. We'll get our beer
and I'll tell you about it."
They found a table in the crowded room. Palo Bajo was too small a town to rate an atomic bomb, so
in the tavern were clerks and business men and laborers—fathers of families and loudly shirted young
men and men who were trying to forget the menace that hung over the country, and men who did not
even try to think about it.
Murfree explained as Bud Gregory drank his beer. He explained in words of one syllable that a
certain European Power had proved it had rockets which could travel two thousand miles, and atom
bombs for them to carry. And, with those up its sleeve, it demanded that the United States give up its
way of life and adopt an entirely new social system.
It was ready to blast every city in North America on a moment's notice. If the United
States—unready as usual—started to get ready to fight, it would be destroyed. Every big city in the
nation would be blown to atoms before preparations for defense could be even halfway completed.
Bud Gregory listened uncomprehendingly. He drank his beer and squirmed in his seat. "But I don't
aim to have no truck with sheriffs and policemen and such!" he protested. "I ain't botherin' nobody."
Murfree explained further. Bud Gregory could devise some defense. He could probably make the
defense. If he did, he, Murfree, would guarantee that he would have money enough to live on for all the
rest of his life.
"But you're a gov'ment man," said Bud Gregory unhappily. "You're a good fella but I don't want no
truck with the gov'ment."

MURFREE sweated. Promises of a fortune meant nothing to Bud Gregory. But Murfree had a
hundred and fifty dollars left. He offered that for a device that would protect America against atomic
bombardment. Millions had no meaning to Bud Gregory. A hundred and fifty dollars was concrete. He
wavered.
"Listen here, Mr. Murfree," Gregory said plaintively. "I got some fellas comin' to see me today. They
told me they'd pay me a hundred dollars down and ten dollars a day if I just fitted a car up with the
dinkus I got on a friend's car over at the track. I don't even have to make it! All I got to do is take it off
that racin'-car and put it on their car, and I don't aim to work myself to death for nobody. If I got ten
dollars a day coming' in, I'm all set. I can just set and not bother nobody.
Murfree felt sheer desperation. Talk of war and devastation had no meaning to Bud Gregory. He just
wanted to sit somnolently in the sunshine. If he could get a hundred dollars without working, he would not