"Robert F. Young - Flying Pan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

on. "In fact, this was a forced landing. Fortunately, however, I know a secret formula whereby I can
convert the energy in a dry-cell battery into a controlled chain reaction. Do you have any?"
"I'll see," Marianne said.
"Remember now, no tricks. I'll burn you right through the walls with my atomic ray gun if you try to
call anyone!"
"I—I think there's a flashlight in my bed-table drawer."
There was. She unscrewed the base, shook out the batteries and set them on the window sill. Prince
May Trehano went into action. He opened a little door on the side of his ship and rolled the batteries
through. Then he turned to Marianne. "Don't you move an inch from where you are!" he said. "I'll be
watching you through the viewports." He stepped inside and closed the door.
Marianne held her terror at bay and peered at the spaceship more closely. They aren't really flying
saucers at all, she thought; they're just like frying pans . . . flying frying pans. It even had a little bracket
that could have been the place where the handle was supposed to go. Not only that, its ventral regions
strongly suggested a frying-pan cover.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. First thing you knew, everything she saw would look like a
frying pan. She remembered the viewports Prince Moy Trehano had mentioned, and presently she made
them out—a series of tiny crinkly windows encircling the upper part of the saucer. She leaned closer,
trying to see into the interior.
"Stand back!"
Marianne straightened up abruptly, so abruptly that she nearly lost her kneeling position before the
window and toppled back into the room. Prince Moy Trehano had reemerged from his vessel and was
standing imperiously in the combined radiance of the bedroom light and SPRUCK'S CORN PADS.
"The technical secrets of my stellar empire are not for the likes of you," he said. "But as a
recompense for your assistance in the repairing of my atomic drive I am going to divulge my space fleet's
target areas.
"We do not contemplate the complete destruction of humanity. We wish merely to destroy the
present civilization, and to accomplish this it is our intention to wipe out every city on Earth. Villages will
be exempt, as will small towns with populations of less than 20,000 humans. The bombings will begin as
soon as I get back to my fleet—a matter of four or five hours—and if I do not return, they will begin in
four or five hours anyway. So if you value your life, go ho— I mean, leave the city at once. I, Prince Moy
Trehano, have spoken!"
Once again the bow, and the iridescing of the tinselly helmet, and then Prince Moy Trehano stepped
into the spaceship and slammed the door. A whirring sound ensued, and the vessel began to shake.
Colored lights went on in the viewports—a red one here, a blue one there, then a green one—creating a
Christmas-tree effect.
Marianne watched, entranced. Suddenly the door flew open and Prince Moy Trehano's head
popped out. "Get back!" he shouted. "Get back! You don't want to get burned by the jets, do you?" His
head disappeared and the door slammed again.
Jets? Were flying saucers jet-propelled? Even as she instinctively shrank back into her bedroom,
Marianne pondered the question. Then, as the saucer rose from the window ledge and into the night, she
saw the little streams of fire issuing from its base. They were far more suggestive of sparks from a Zippo
lighter than they were of jets, but if Prince Moy Trehano had said they were jets, then jets they were.
Marianne was not inclined to argue the point.
When she thought about the incident afterward she remembered a lot of points that she could have
argued—if she'd wanted to. Prince Moy Trehano's knowledge of the English language, for one, and his
slip of the tongue when he started to tell her to go home, for another. And then there was the matter of
his atomic drive. Certainly, Marianne reflected later, if the bombs his fleet was supposed to have carried
were as technically naive as his atomic drive, the world had never had much to worry about.
But at the moment she didn't feel like arguing any points. Anyway, she was too busy to argue. Busy
packing. Under ordinary circumstances Prince Moy Trehano's threatened destruction of the cities of