"Emil Petaja - Dinosaur Goes Hollywood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

it—and unlocked it. Very carefully he unwrapped a round white thing that looked like a big egg.
" 'Stand back!' he yelled to me. `Away from the Net zone!' And he tossed this egg into the middle of
the circle.
"It burst. Clouds of vapor shot out on all sides of it. Pretty soon the circle was covered with a queer
yellow fog, thick as pea soup.
" 'Now what?' I asks, looking at the yellow fog warily.
" 'There's nothing we can do but wait,' Doc says. 'My Time-Net is all set. If my calculations are
correct we should snare something very soon. That circle of space enclosed by my Net has been
transferred back to the Mesozoic Age!'

WE WAITED. And waited.
"Nothing happened. Doc sent me out for lunch, and to bring him back a ham-and from a
delicatessen. And then we waited some more.
"Doc had arranged to have cops guard all the entrances to the little park, so that no curious
bystanders would get into anything.
"Toward evening I commenced to get restless. I had a torrid date with a dame called Ethel. One of
those ravaging blondes. What that babe can do with a sweater—boy!
"We were planning on going to the big Back To The Dawn premiere, using passes Doc gave me.
The studio sent them to him, on account he was what you call a—uh—I dunno. A scientific stooge on the
picture. They'd ask him if such-and-such was authentic, and when he said no, they'd go right ahead and
put it in anyhow.
"It was sure a break for me. I was borrowing Doc's low-slung Dusenberg. Make a big splash with
Ethel.
"So about five o'clock, I reminded the Doc.
"He heaved a couple sighs. 'You're right, Jock,' he says sadly. 'We may as well go home. The yellow
fog is almost gone, and nothing's appeared yet. I must have made a mistake somewhere. I'll go over to
my laboratory and check over my computations.'
"He asked the cops to stand guard for a couple hours more just in case. Then we packed up the
Time-Net, and scrammed.
"Back home, I slipped into my tux, looking pretty zootsuit if I do say so. Then I drove over and
picked up Ethel.
"She had poured herself into one of those Dorothy LaMarr slinkers, and made me wish I had on
dark glasses. Did she glitter!
"We stopped for dinner at the Brown Derby, me blowing half a week's pay to make a good
impression. Then I lit a Corona-Corona, and sent the hack purring down Wilshire Boulevard toward the
Cathay Square Theatre. I was all set for a large evening ...
"I slid Ethel a shy-violet look, and then all of a sudden saw her pretty pan change into a mask of
surprised horror.
" 'What's the beef ?' I inquired. "'Look!' she screamed, pointing out the side window. 'A monster!'

"I LOOKED.
"She wasn't kidding! We were right near the La Brea Pits again, and, shambling out of the Doc's
Time-Net circle on mammoth earth-shaking pins, flopping a gigantic tail behind him, was a dinosaur!
"I knew right away that was what he was because he looked a lot like one of them stone lizards in the
park, only ten times bigger. Also he looked like a model of a dinosaur what was worked by a man inside
it—that I saw when I was out at a Colossus Picture's set, when they were shooting Back To The Dawn.
"Ethel shrieked again, blotting the sight away with her red-nailed fingers. "I braked the car at the
curb, and sat rubbering at the dino. What a sight he was! Must have been fifty feet high, and bigger than
six elephants rolled into one.
"He made a kind of slobbering noise with his mouth, and weaved his long serpentine neck slowly