"Campbell, John W Jr - Arcot, Wade and Morey 03 - Invaders from the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

Arcot, a flying suit already on, was up in the air, and darting past
Morey in an instant, streaking for the vertical shaft that would let him
out to the roof. The molecular ray pistol was already in his hand, ready
to pull any beams off unfortunate victims pinned under them.

In a moment he had flashed up through the seven stories, and out to the
roof. A gigantic silvery machine rested there, streamlined to
perfection, its hull dazzlingly beautiful in the sunlight A

door opened, and three tall, lean men stepped from it. Already people
were collecting about the ship, flying up from below. Air patrolmen
floated up in a minute, and seeing Arcot, held the crowd back.

The strange men were tall, eight feet or more in height. Great, round,
soft brown eyes looked in curiosity at the towering multicolored
buildings, at the people floating in the air, at the green trees and the
blue sky, the yellowish sun.

Arcot looked at their strangely blotched and mottled heads, faces, arms
and hands. Their feet were very long and narrow, their legs long and
thin. Their faces were kindly; the mottled skin, brown and white and
black, seemed not to make them ugly. It was not a disfigurement; it
seemed oddly familiar and natural in some reminiscent way.

"Lord, Arcot--queer specimens, yet they seem familiar!" said Morey in an
undertone.

"They are. Their race is that of man's first and best friend, the dog!
See the brown eyes? The typical teeth? The feet still show the traces of
the dog's toe-step. Their nails, not flat like human ones but rounded?
The mottled skin, the ears--look, one is advancing."

One of the strangers walked laboriously forward. A lighter world than
Earth was evidently his home. His great brown eyes fixed themselves on
Arcot's. Arcot watched them. They seemed to expand, grow larger; they
seemed to fill all the sky. Hypnotism! He concentrated his mind, and the
eyes suddenly contracted to the normal eyes of the stranger. The man
reeled back, as Arcot's telepathic command to sleep came, stronger than
his own will. The stranger's friends caught him, shook him, but he
slept. One of the others looked at Arcot; his eyes seemed hurt,
desperately pleading.

Arcot strode forward, and quickly brought the man out of the trance. He
shook his head, smiled at Arcot, then, with desperate difficulty, he
enunciated some words in English, terribly distorted.

"Ahy wizz tahk. Vokle kohds ron. Tahk by breen."

Distorted as it was, Arcot recognized the meaning without difficulty. "I
wish (to) talk. Vocal cords wrong. Talk by brain." He switched to