"06 - Master Mind of Mars, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

skill and agility to make my way upon the Red Planet.
The old man led me into a small chamber from which opened numerous doors,
through one of which they were just bearing my late antagonist. We followed into
a large, brilliantly lighted chamber wherein there burst upon my astounded
vision the most gruesome scene that I ever had beheld. Rows upon rows of tables
arranged in parallel lines filled the room and with few exceptions each table
bore a similar grisly burden, a partially dismembered or otherwise mutilated
human corpse. Above each table was a shelf bearing containers of various sizes
and shapes, while from the bottom of the shelf depended numerous surgical
instruments, suggesting that my entrance upon Barsoom was to be through a
gigantic medical college.
At a word from the old man, those who bore the Barsoomian I had wounded laid him
upon an empty table and left the apartment. Whereupon my host if so I may call
him, for certainly he was not as yet my captor, motioned me forward. While he
conversed in ordinary tones, he made two incisions in the body of my late
antagonist; one, I imagine, in a large vein and one in an artery, to which he
deftly attached the ends of two tubes, one of which was connected with an empty
glass receptacle and the other with a similar receptacle filled with a
colourless, transparent liquid resembling clear water. The connections made, the
old gentleman pressed a button controlling a small motor, whereupon the victim's
blood was pumped into the empty jar while the contents of the other was forced
into the emptying veins and arteries.
The tones and gestures of the old man as he addressed me during this operation
convinced me that he was explaining in detail the method and purpose of what was
transpiring, but as I understood no word of all he said I was as much in the
dark when he had completed his discourse as I was before he started it, though
what I had seen made it appear reasonable to believe that I was witnessing an
ordinary Barsoomian embalming. Having removed the tubes the old man closed the
openings he had made by covering them with bits of what appeared to be heavy
adhesive tape and then motioned me to follow him. We went from room to room, in
each of which were the same gruesome exhibits. At many of the bodies the old man
paused to make a brief examination or to refer to what appeared to be a record
of the case, that hung upon a hook at the head of each of the tables.
From the last of the chambers we visited upon the first floor my host led me up
an inclined runway to the second floor where there were rooms similar to those
below, but here the tables bore whole rather than mutilated bodies, all of which
were patched in various places with adhesive tape. As we were passing among the
bodies in one of these rooms a Barsoomian girl, whom I took to be a servant or
slave, entered and addressed the old man, whereupon he signed me to follow him
and together we descended another runway to the first floor of another building.
Here, in a large, gorgeously decorated and sumptuously furnished apartment an
elderly red-woman awaited us. She appeared to be quite old and her face was
terribly disfigured as by some injury. Her trappings were magnificent and she
was attended by a score of women and armed warriors, suggesting that she was a
person of some consequence, but the little old man treated her quite brusquely,
as I could see, quite to the horror of her attendants.
Their conversation was lengthy and at the conclusion of it, at the direction of
the woman, one of her male escort advanced and opening a pocket pouch at his
side withdrew a handful of what appeared to me to be Martian coins. A quantity
of these he counted out and handed to the little old man, who then beckoned the