"William Tenn - The Flat-Eyed Monster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

of slime, a thick, grayish slime, that oozed out of the black bodies and dripped with a steady
splash-splash-splash to the floor beneath.
On his left, about fifteen feet away, where the tabletop extended a long peninsula, there was another
one of the creatures. Its tentacles gripped a pulsating spheroid across the surface of which patches of
light constantly appeared and disappeared.
As near as Manship could tell, all the visible eyes of the three were watching him intently. He
shivered and tried to pull his shoulders closer together.
"Well, Professor," someone asked suddenly, "what would you say?"
"I'd say this was one hell of a way to wake up," Manship burst out, feelingly. He was about to go on
and develop this theme in more colorful detail when two things stopped him.
The first was the problem of who had asked the question. He had seen no other human—no other
living creature, in fact—besides the three tentacled suitcases any-where in that tremendous,
moisture-filled room.
The second thing that stopped him was that someone else had begun to answer the question at the
same time, cutting across Manship's words and ignoring them completely.
"Well, obviously," this person said, "the experiment is a success. It has completely justified its
expense and the long years of research behind it. You can see for yourself, Councilor Glomg, that
one-way teleportation is an accomplished fact."
Manship realized that the voices were coming from his right. The wider of the two
suitcases—evidently "the professor" to whom the original query had been addressed—was speaking to
the narrower one, who had swung most of his stalked eyes away from Manship and had focused them on
his companion. Only where in blazes were the voices coming from? Somewhere inside their bodies?
There was no sign anywhere of vocal apparatus.
AND HOW COME, Manship's mind suddenly shrieked, THEY TALK ENGLISH?
"I can see that," Councilor Glomg admitted with a blunt honesty that became him well. "It's an
accomplished fact, all right, Professor Lirld. Only, what precisely has it accomplished?"
Lirld raised some thirty or forty tentacles in what Manship realized fascinatedly was an elaborate and
impatient shrug. "The teleportation of a living organism from astronomical unit 649-301-3 without the aid
of transmitting apparatus on the planet of origin"
The Councilor swept his eyes back to Manship. "You call that living?" he inquired doubtfully.
"Oh, come now, Councilor," Professor Lirld protested. "Let's not have any flefnomorphism. It is
obviously sentient, obviously motile, after a fashion—"
"All right. It's alive. I'll grant that. But sentient? It doesn't even seem to pmbff from where I stand.
And those horrible lonely eyes! Just two of them—and so flat! That dry, dry skin without a trace of
slime. I'll admit that—"
"You're not exactly a thing of beauty and a joy forever yourself, you know," Manship, deeply
offended, couldn't help throwing out indignantly.
"—I tend to flemomorphism in my evaluation of alien life-forms," the other went on as if he hadn't
spoken. "Well, I'm a flefnobe and proud of it. But after all, Professor Lirld, I have seen some impossible
creatures from our neighboring planets that my son and other explorers have brought back. The very
strangest of them, the most primi-tive ones, at least can pmbff! But this—this thing. Not the smallest,
slightest trace of a pmb do I see on it! It's eerie, that's what it is—eerie!"
 "Not at all," Lirld assured him. "It's merely a scientific anomaly. Possibly in the outer reaches of the
galaxy where animals of this sort are frequent, possibly condi-tions are such that pmbffing is
unnecessary. A careful examination should tell us a good deal very quickly. Meanwhile, we've proved
that life exists in other areas of the galaxy than its sun-packed core. And when the time comes for us to
conduct explor-atory voyages to these areas, intrepid adventurers like your son will go equipped with
information. They will know what to expect."
"Now, listen," Manship began shouting in desperation. "Can you or can you not hear me?"
"You can shut off the power, Srin," Professor Lirld commented. "No sense in wast-ing it. I believe