"Campbell, John W Jr - The Brain Pirates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

THE BRAIN PIRATES
I
DOUBLE GRAVITY
THE Ion propelled itself powerfully through the void. Inside the craft, Rodney Blake's arm reached out in a dramatic gesture of disclosure. Half a hundred thousand miles away hung a dusty, underripe peach. It was dim and hard to see, here, where the sun's light was diluted by five billion miles of space.
"There she is, skipper," he told his permanent partner, Ted Penton. "The only satellite of the Tenth Worldl Are we still going to investigate it?"
"We sure are. As long as we are this far out from the sun, we may as well see what's seeable," Penton answered firmly. "We have those new suits rigged with atomic-pow-
ered lifting gadgets, so that'll protect us from the weight, if what our instruments say about that world's true. I still don't see how any member of this System could be so confoundedly dense. This satellite has a diameter of thirty-four hundred miles, yet the surface gravity is double that of Earthl"
Blake whistled softly.
"Incidentally," he said, "we ought to land in about half an hour. Any suggestions as to where to go? Try your telescope."
Penton disappeared into the observatory booth and came back presently with a rough-sketch map.
"I was up there just before I slept. That was nine hours ago, and this place here on the sketch was in the nightshade then, glowing faintly. I think it may be a highly radioactive section. Looking through the 'scope just now, I see it has moved into daylight, and the glow is hidden by the sunlight, weak as it is out here, but there is some funny, rainbow colored mineral formation there. Let's land there. I'll go check up on those suits, and make some adjustments. I hadn't thought they'd have to handle any double-gravity worlds."
"That's a swell map," complained Blake. "You've drawn the thing from the image in an astronomical 'scope. It's inverted. I'm going to be too busy to figure out mirror images. And may I suggest that you make sure you don't get those drive-units in the suits backward? I'd hate to have them sit on me as well as a doubled gravity."
Penton grinned and went down the corridor toward the airlock, picking up a kit of tools from the machine-shop bench as he passed. Presently he was deeply engrossed in the delicate task of readjusting the tiny atomic-power drive units he had fixed in the spacesuits. The mobility these would furnish would have been highly welcome at the time they had been visiting the Tenth World.
"Oh, Ted!" Penton raised his head abruptly from the work of fastening down the cover plate that engaged his attention for the past twenty minutes. The slightly metallic voice had issued from the airlock speaker over bis head.
"Yes?"
"We're about to land," said Blake's voice. "Help^ take over. Throw the switch. And I hope those suits suit us!"
Penton and Blake stared fretfully through the windows of the Ion. The inhabitants of the satellite were regarding the explorers with a mild curiosity.
"Those birds are waiting with remarkable patience," Pen-ton said, somewhat annoyed. "And this seems to be the local Central Park, wherefore our landing may have annoyed them. Come on, you have a UV gun on one hip, and a disintegrator on the other, and-"
"Lead in both legs. Did you notice that local yokel to the left of us make a slow, stately bow? He snapped like a flag in the wind. I'll bet they can move five times as fast as we can-or at least two times as fast. This gravity's faster."
"Not faster than 186,000 miles a second," Penton declared firmly. "Did you observe them closely? Mount one olive on one grapefruit. Two fat sausages protruding from the opposite sides of said grapefruit just below the olive, two fatter frankfurters at the nether end, all add up to equal one-Tenthworldsatelliteian."
"They do have a chubby air"-Blake grinned-"but I don't claim to move 186,000 miles a second. And these boys do move fast."
"They're patient anyway, much more so than I am. Lift your blasted carcass and come on. They're a pretty human looking gang, even if they do look like prize-winners in the Fat Men's Club. Besides, fat men are always jolly. You know as well as I do that you're coming in the end, so let's
go-"
Reluctantly Blake heaved. He heaved harder, remaining curiously fixed to his seat.
"Boy, am I agile," he grunted softly, and gave in. Slowly he turned up the lift-control at his belt. A slow creaking of straps and an unhappy wriggling on Blake's part attested to die increasing power of the atomic drive mounted on the suit. Blake rose. "I can't even stand up without the aid of this thing. Let's go."
Penton opened the outer lock door. Blake stepped down, or better, floated down behind Penton. The gravity-equalizer made him feel as if he were riding on a parachute. Penton faced the strange inhabitants and slowly raised both hands above his head in^a gesture of friendship.
He'd intended to hold them out horizontally in front of him, but the effort, under that gravity, was distinctly uncomfortable.
"From a much lighter world, aren't you?" suggested a rather philosophically friendly telepathic voice. "From an inner planet? Well-I have always been convinced there were more than five inner planets."
"Ten," said Penton automatically. "We're from the third."
One of the immensely rounded inhabitants of this world nodded in pleased acknowledgement.
"Ah, interesting. Very, The third world, then, and there are twelve."
"Twelve?"
Blake stared at the moon-faced spokesman.
"Oh, so, so. Ah, yes. Two more. That makes twelve. That's even more interesting. There are two worlds further out. Remarkably small eyes you have, if I may say so. The bright light near the sun, I suppose."
Blake nodded vaguely. The moon-faced inhabitant did have large eyes; it was only the immense roundness of his face that made them appear small. Now at the ground level, Blake could better judge their height and size. About five feet tall, each was, and approximately six feet in circumference at the equator-which was quite marked. They resembled diminutive, but well inflated carnival balloons made in caricature shapes.
"It looks," said Penton softly, "as though we'll have to go way out before we go back toward the sun. We'll have to see those two worlds."
"Yes, see them. Interesting ship you have. We've been trying for some time to make one like it-atomic power, eh? Yes. Will you accompany us? ... I, by the way, am Ter-runs, associated with the Power and Mechanisms Depart-
ment of Runal City. Oh, this world? We call our primary, Turlun, and our satellite here is called Pornan.
"But I think we may go to the city. The members of the Power and Mechanisms Department have been very anxious to speak with you since your ship was first sighted. There was rather a flurry there as to where you would land. Very proud to have you in our city. You will come? Our cars are ahead."
"Why-yes," said Penton, slightly bewildered. Then,'more firmly, "Yes, we will be very interested to see more of your civilization on this world so far from the sun. Our lives, our civilization, you understand, are all based on the movements or apparent movements of the sun."
Terruns waved briskly in a vertical plane. His remarkably rotund body did not crease, so far as Blake's closely watching, interested eye could determine, but simply contracted vertically, and spread laterally in front, with a reversal of this process in back. The queerly hectic bowing of the comically grapefruitish body fascinated Blake, with the same childish wonder that the incomprehensible leg-work of the millipede inspires.
Terruns straightened abruptly and regarded Penton closely with large, dark eyes.
"The ship, by the way. It does not move in your absence?" he asked somewhat anxiously.
Penton looked at him somewhat blankly.
"No, it is manually controlled-it will stay where it is."
The round face parted in a somewhat fatuous smile of satisfaction.
"Ah, excellent. Yes, if it stays there, that will be well. You will know it is here. Come with us. Yes, a lighter world. The supports in the suits-very ingenious, very-" His mental speech faded off gradually. Blake and Penton watched with interest as the dozen or so Pornans set off in perfect unison across the close-cropped turf. Each was dressed in a precisely uniform outfit of apparently skin-tight elastic fabric, of a rather pleasing, greenish hue in itself, but covered with a
repetitive and complex pattern of spirals and sharp-angled zigzags.
The Pornans' legs were rather short, and distinctly over the "stout" classification. But they worked like frantic pumps, bouncing up and down at a flurried pace, while the associated body rocked and rolled in a manner curiously reminiscent of a round-bodied bell-buoy in a choppy sea. But they made progress, such progress, considering their girth, that for a moment, Blake and Penton stood in astonished surprise, while their guides almost disappeared over a little pink swale of land.
"Did you notice the turf?" Penton asked Blake as they followed behind. "It's apparently a sort of moss, and a remarkably pink one at that. But then, the trees are, too. Incidentally, they don't use sunlight as a source of energy, of course. Look, our hosts seem to have arrived at their car."