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

Penton, who had started down the road in great leaps, looked back-and leaped faster. A two-foot thick, doughy mass was rolling of its own volition in his direction. He turned down a side street and increased his pace. He began to jump from side to side but it caught up with him.
It was soft, and squashy, but rubbery. It simply clung about his feet, and crept slowly up and over his legs, up his body, while he tore great holes in the doughiness that persistently grew together again. Desperately he drove his hand into his pocket while the Lanoor police ran toward him with their slow, exaggerated strides, gas bombs in hands. A glass bulb arched forward, but fell short of him.
Then his hand came free with the flashlight, as the crawling, doughy stuff crept about his other arm. An instant later the thing was bouncing and bounding down the street madly, from side to side, throwing itself in all directions, smashing
down the rapidly approaching Lanoor, and rebounding with evident terror. Somehow the flashlight had driven it away.
Penton loped easily into an alley, and after several blocks of leaping fences, circled back. A crowd of Lanoor guardsmen were carefully roping Blake. The Earthmen lay inert in the roadway with bis head thrown back, heavy snores gurgling forth. Penton walked as near as he felt was reasonably safe, and looked. An empty car stood nearby. He headed for it. It was a light roadster, and after some calculations he started it in the direction of Blake. The Lanoor guardsmen peppered it with glass bubbles; two doughy things tried to mesh its powerful wheels and were torn up, only to reform accidentally as one large one. The guardsmen scattered as the car rolled quietly forward and coasted to a stop.
Blake had already begun to stir, and Penton stopped. Evidently his previous exposure to the gas seemed to confer a semi-immunity. Methodically he released his friend. "I think," said Penton, thoughtfully, "that it is time to seek lodging for the day. This looks like a pleasantly dilapidated section."
Ill
THE SHLEATH
PENTON LOOKED down the shabby street. His view was restricted somewhat, because even though it was the widest of numerous sad cracks in the even sadder wreck that had once been a house and now sheltered them, it was narrow. A Lanoor was walking down the far side, stumbling through a series of dreary mud puddles in a peculiarly automatonlike way. Abruptly he halted stock still in the center of an unusually well developed puddle and shook his head slowly. It weaved about dangerously on the pipe-stem neck, and the shabbily dressed giant looked dazedly about him. After a while he started on vaguely, a gradual deepening of purpose putting increasing firmness in his gangling walk.
Penton sighed and turned away. He nodded to Blake and sat down.
"He's started. He did just what I ordered him to. Unless some Shaloor for some impossible reason picks that one man out of all the city to practice hypnotism on, those hypnotic orders I gave him are going to work, and he will bring P'holkuun here. It ought not to take more than an hour."
"But will he come? And will it do any good, if he dpes? He didn't help us before," protested Blake.
"He will for two reasons. The chances are the Shaloor won't know that trick about crotonaldehyde-I used something else, a catalyst that intensified the action-and they are going to be mighty mystified as to how in Nine Planets and Great Spaces we took the starch out of that wall. They'll be even more worried about the way that doughball they sicced on me backfired when I used the flashlight. He'll come, and he will probably help, now that we have shown him we can do something the Shaloor can't. I think we have an hour to wait."
They actually had less than an hour. A small roadster came slowly up the street, and stopped four or five doors away. The tall Lanoor got out. With some trepidation, evidently, he came over and cautiously opened the door.
"Come in, P'holkuun. You are a welcome sight."
"You've caused a great deal of trouble," the Lanoor greeted them. "The Shaloor have posted many guards about the palace; it has made any hope of a revolution useless for some time. They have taken the sleep-gas throwers away from the Lanoor guards, leaving them only swords. And the shleaih are all locked up."
"Is a shleaih," asked Penton thoughtfully, "a doughy thing without any legs, but possessed of a peculiarly unpleasant odor, and a miraculous slime?"
"No," the Lanoor sighed. "You have no idea of what skleath are. Those were grethlanth they turned on you last night. The shleath are fifty feet in diameter, but otherwise much like those things. The Shaloor are still very much puzzled by the way the grethlanth ran away from you. They
are fearless, and never before have they run from a prisoner."
Penton smiled, grimly.
"That, my friend, was electricity. It was one of the forces the Shaloor have not guessed. Here, moisten your two fingers like this, and touch this little metal piece." Penton illustrated the action, and the Lanoor hesitatingly touched the terminals of the flash. Instantly he jumped three feet backward and fell to the floor.
Slowly he sat up, shaking his head, while Penton and Blake looked at each other curiously.
"That-that is horrible! Put it awayl" gasped the Lanoor. "It made all my muscles writhe into knots. It made my heart contract as though a giant had squeezed it. It is horrible!"
"It is electricity," said Penton slowly, "and you seem to be very sensitive to it, much more so than we are. Now, what did you say a shleath was?"
"It is a great mass of protoplasm jelly which obeys readily the will of its controller," replied P'holkuun, rubbing his arm, and eyeing the flash uneasily. "It cannot be killed, because if part is poisoned that part is split oif. If it is shot or cut, that does no harm. It is not affected by sleep-gas. It is immensely strong, and can assume any form. The Shaloor conquered the Lanoor rulers originally by sending shleath up a small drain pipe in the form of a thread of protoplasm, and having it assume the form of a roller in the barred and defended fortress where the Lanoor rulers were. The shleath digest anything the Shaloor want them to. They can dissolve even metal. Only glass is impervious to them. If there is even a ventilation hole, the shleath can seep through."
"How many are there?"
"Thousands. They use them as work animals when need be, because they can seep under a heavy stone, girder, or mass of metal, and gradually all come under it so that the mass is lifted. Or they can hang down as a sticky cable from a high place, wrap around the stone, and contract to lift it. If an ordinary shleath is not strong enough, four or a hundred devour each other and form one big one, and that does the work. In the last revolt, a thousand shleath made a
ring around the whole Lanoor army, and contracted till they were just one large lump. The army was then part of the shleath."
Blake looked fixedly at Penton.
"I think," he said in English, "we'd best find the shortest route for another planet. I don't like the sound of these over-stuffed amoebas. But I'd love to stack them up against the Martian thushol. Couldn't that pair have a time?"
"We'll have to get to the ship, P'holkuun. Then we can use its power to defeat your enemies."
The Lanoor shifted his feet, and looked across the room.
"The ship," he said finally, "has been moved to the palace. Twenty shleath did that last night. The Shaloor knew that you would make for the ship, so they put it where they could make sure you didn't get it. They are all in the palace, and they have the ship in the inner courtyard. That is the place we call the court of the shleath. I do not know how you will get your ship. Maybe you could make magic on a Shaloor as you did with the strange man you sent to me. The Shaloor are working to make defenses, because they are afraid of you. They are even more afraid of the ship, so they have not touched it. If you can make a Shaloor do as the Lanoor you sent to me did, perhaps you can get the shleath out of the way. But no Lanoor can move them; they cannot be imprisoned; they never die."
"Can you feed them until they are groggy?"
"No, they just break up into more shleath, so there are twice as many and twice as hungry."
Penton looked slowly at Blake. "If you don't like the shleath, maybe we better decide to stay here for a while," he sighed at length. "You are sure there were not any leftover thushol on the ship? One of those Martian beasts might seriously distract the Shaloor just now."
"When Greek meets Greek," sighed Blake. "I'd love to see what would happen if an angry shleath met a Martian thushol. Would the thushol turn into an indigestible rock, or would he imitate a bigger shleath and eat the one that had
attacked him? It is a beautiful, theosophical problem as to why the Lord ever let anything like that exist-"
"He didn't. The Shaloor invented the shleath and from what the Martians told us, the thushol invented themselves. You know, Ted, back on Mars old Loshthu told us all about "the thushol. Rearrange the letters in his name and they practically spell thushol! I'll bet he really was one of them, and was laughing up his sleeve at us all the whilel But that's not the point. The idea is to get inside the ship without getting inside a shleath." He turned to the Ganymedian. "P'holkuun, can you start the rebellion?"
"Not until you can stop the shleath," answered the Lanoor firmly. "The rest of my people won't even talk rebellion until they are sure they won't be used for tidbits. You have never had a fifty-foot glob of jelly scrunch down on your best friend, and watched the expression of horror fade from his face because his face was dissolving out from under the expression."
"P'holkuun, sit down a minute. I want to think," said Pen-ton gustily, as he squatted cross-legged on the floor. "I have to find out what part of our science will beat your science. I know there is some item. Tell me things. Can you or your men get access to a metal-worker's shop? A place where there are all kinds of metals? And can you make there for me, many hundreds of small, metal machines? They will be simple, but I know a thing of science that will, I think, save you from further trouble with the shleath."
"We can get some metals. Not the yellow metal, or the heavy, kingly metals. Only Lanoor work in the metal shops, so we can make machines, if they are simple enough, and small enough to conceal."
"Good. Bring me, as soon as possible, a sample of all the different metals you can find. And-one of those doughy things-a grethlanth-faat the police set on me the other night. Can you do it?"
"Yes," said P'holkuun, somewhat doubtfully. "But can you do anything?"
Penton smiled. "Friend, when I get into that sacred court
of theirs, the Shaloor are going to come out of the palace faster than they have ever before moved. I shall want only about a dozen courageous Lanoor; all the rest of the rebels will stay well outside the palace and catch the Shaloor as they come out. They will come out very rapidly. And I would not advise any of your people to remain within six blocks of the palace."
"They couldn't anyway. The Shaloor live all about the palace. If you are sure-"
Blake lay down gently in the corner after P'holkuun went. He was tired. The atmosphere of the little planet was enervating. Furthermore, he only half believed in Penton, and Penton became as communicative as the surrounding walls.
Blake slept. He slept quite peacefully until he was startled from his sleep by queer chirpings, cracklings, and loud bumpings. He sat up, only to be knocked flat by a massive, doughy affair that smacked into him, and swooshily dropped over his shoulder. Laboriously he struggled up again and looked at the dirty-gray mass that was cavorting crazily about the floor in the dim light of dusk.
Evidently P'holkuun had come and gone, and had supplied Blake with a grethlanth.