"Asimov, Isaac - Lucky Starr 04 - Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

"Why should I?Ф
"To save your miserable life.Ф
"That's not enough reason for me," said Bigman, and he rose to his feet and took a step forward.
Urteil moved backward till he was leaning against the wall of the tunnel. "One more motion and I'll blast you with pleasure. I don't need your information very badly. It will save time, but not much. If I spend more than five minutes with you, it's a waste.
"Now let me tell you exactly what I think. Maybe it will teach you that you and your tin hero, Starr, are fooling nobody. Neither one of you is good for anything more than tricks with force-knives against an unarmed man.Ф
Bigman thought gloomily: That's what's griping the cobber. I made him look like a jackass in front of the boys, and he's waiting for me to crawl.
"If you're going to do all that talking," he said, squeezing as much contempt into his voice as he could manage, "you might as well shoot. I'd rather be blasted than talked to death.Ф
"Don't race for it, little fellow, don't race for it. In the first place, Senator Swenson is breaking the Council of Science. You're just an item, a tiny one. Your friend Starr is just another item, and not a much bigger one. I'm the one who's going to do the breaking. We've got the Council where we want it. The people of Earth know it's riddled with corruption, that its officers waste the taxpayers' money and line their own pocketsФ
"That's a filthy lie," broke in Bigman.
"We'll let the people decide that. Once we puncture the phony propaganda the Council puts out, we'll see what the people think.Ф
"You try that. Go ahead and try!Ф
"We intend to. We'll succeed too. And this will be exhibit number one: you two in the mines. I know why you're here. The Sirians! Huh! Starr either put Peverale up to telling the story, or he just took advantage of it. I'll tell you what you two are doing down here. You're faking the Sirians. You're setting up a Sirian camp to show people.
" 'I chased them off singlehanded,' Starr will say. 'I, Lucky Starr, big hero.' The sub-etherics make a big deal out of it and the Council calls off its Project Light on the sly. They've milked it for all it's worth, and they're getting out with their skinsExcept that they won't be because I'll catch Starr in the act and he'll be so much mud under shoe and so will the Council.Ф
Bigman was sick with fury. He longed to tear at the other with his bare hands, but somehow he managed to hold himself in leash. He knew why Urteil was talking as he was. It was because he man didn't know as much as he pretended. He was trying to get more out of Bigman by making him blind-mad.
In a low voice, Bigman tried to turn the tables. "You know, you putrid cobber, if anyone ever punctured you and let out the comet gas, your peanut-sized soul would show itself clear. Once they let the rot out of you, you'd collapse to nothing but a loose sack of dirty skin.Ф
Urteil shouted, "That's enoughФ
But Bigman shouted over him, his high-pitched voice ringing. "Shoot, you yellow pirate. You showed yellow at the dinner table. Stand up to me, man to man, with bare fists and you'll show yellow again, bloated as you are.Ф
Bigman was tense now. Let Urteil act in rash haste now. Let Urteil aim on impulse and Bigman would jump. Death was probable, but there would be a chance But Urteil seemed only to stiffen and grow colder.
"If you don't talk, I'll kill you. And nothing will happen to me. I'll claim self-defense and make it stick.Ф
"Not with Lucky, you won't.Ф
"He'll have his own troubles. When I'm through with him, his opinions won't mean a thing." The blaster in Urteil's hand was steady. "Are you going to try to run for it?Ф
"From you?" Bigman said.
"It's up to you," said Urteil coldly.
Bigman waited, waited without saying a word while Urteil's arm grew stiff and Urteil's headpiece dropped slightly as though he were taking aim, though at point-blank range he could not miss.
Bigman counted the moments, trying to choose the one in which to make his desperate jump for life as Lucky had when Mindes had similarity aimed at him. But here there was no second party to tackle Urteil as Bigman had tackled Mindes on that occasion. And Urteil was no panicky, mind-sick Mindes. He would laugh and aim again.
Bigman's muscles tensed for that final jump. He did not expect to live for more than five more seconds, perhaps.

Dark and Light

But with his body taut, his leg muscles almost vibrating in the first part-instant of contraction, there was a sudden hoarse cry of utter surprise in Bigman's ears.
They were standing there, both of them, in a gray, dark world in which their beams of light etched one another out. Outside the beams of light, nothing, so that the sudden blob of motion that flashed across the line of sight made no sense at first.
His first reaction, his first thought was: Lucky! Had Lucky returned? Had he somehow mastered the situation, turned the tables?
But there was motion again, and the thought of Lucky faded away.
It was as though a fragment of the rocky wall of the shaft had worked itself loose and was drifting downward in the lazy fall that was characteristic of Mercury's low gravity.
A rope of rock that was somehow flexible, that struck Urteil's shoulder andЧclung. One such encircled his waist already. Another moved slowly, bringing itself down and around as though it were part of an unreal world of slowed motion. But as its edge circled Urteil's arm and touched the metal covering Urteil's chest, arm and chest closed upon one another. It was 94 as though the sluggish and seemingly brittle rock contained the irresistible strength of a boa constrictor.
If Urteil's first reaction had been one of surprise, there was now nothing but complete terror in his voice.
"Cold," he croaked harshly. "They're cold.Ф
Bigman's whirling mind was having trouble encompassing the new situation. A piece of that rock had encircled Urteil's lower arm and wrist. The butt of the blaster was clamped in place.
A final rope came floating down. They were so rock-like in appearance that they were invisible until one actually detached itself from the wall.
The ropes were connected one with another as a single organism, but there was no nucleus, no "body." It was like a stony octopus consisting of nothing but tentacles.
Bigman had a kind of explosion of thought.
He thought of rock developing life through the long ages of Mercurian evolution. A completely different form of life from anything Earth knew. A life that lived on scraps of heat alone.
Why not? The tentacles might crawl from place to place, seeking any bit of heat that might exist. Bigman could see them drifting toward Mercury's North Pole when mankind was first established there. First the mines and then the Observatory Dome supplied them with unending trickles of heat.
Man could be their prey too. Why not? A human being was a source of heat. Occasionally an isolated miner might have been trapped. Paralyzed with sudden cold and terror, he would be unable to call for help. Minutes later his power unit would be too low to make a radio call possible in any case. Still later, he would be dead, a frozen relic.
Cook's mad story of the deaths in the mines made sense.
All this passed through Bigman's mind almost in one flash while he remained unmoving, still struggling with a sense of stunned amazement at the sudden new turn of events.
Urteil's voice was somewhere between a moan and a harsh gasp. "IЧcan't Help meЧhelpЧ:Ч It's coldЧcoldФ
Bigman yelled, "Hold on. I'm coming.Ф
Gone in a moment was any thought that this man was an enemy, that moments before he had been on the point of killing Bigman in cold blood. The little Martian recognized but one thing; here was a man, helpless in the grip of something nonhuman.
Since man had first left Earth and ventured into the dangers and mysteries of outer space, there had grown up a stern, unwritten law. Human feuds must be forgotten when man faced the common enemy, the non-human and inhuman forces of the other worlds.