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

"No, but it would answer to the controls, which consist of nerve tissue stimulated by small levers. The steering mechanism consists of four muscles working the front wheels." Penton sighed. "Rod, we Terrestrials never began to guess what life could be made to do. A muscle is three times as efficient as a gas engine, and so far as weight per horsepower goes-your thigh muscle weighs ten pounds, works at the wrong end of a 10 to 1 lever, and can still lift three hundred pounds. I've seen you do it. That's a pull of 3000 pounds from a ten-pound lump of watery, almost substance-less jelly." '
"But, oh, my friend, how tired that muscle can get. And it doesn't move me any eighty miles an hour-even when PTiolkuun and his whole tribe were after me, and I was entreating it to do so," Blake pointed out.
"What you need is a mechanical lung with plenty of capacity, like that blower, and a plastic heart, like that centrifugal pump I noticed. The muscles of your heart work indefinitely without stopping because their blood supply is adequate. Even a gasoline engine gets tired if you stick a potato in the exhaust pipe and clog it up with waste products.
"But the important point is this: If you feel convinced you can walk faster than this thing can go, walk-I'm riding.
You can, however, do the driving, if you like. Your legs are longer, and I must admit that this was designed for an eight-footer. I'll show you the system." Penton paused a moment. Sounds were floating through the still-open door throrfgh which the truck had brought them. "Hm-m-m-I think you must have upset the traffic light system from the sound."
"There did seem to be an argument among the truck drivers as I came over here. I wondered about that. Of course, we don't mind an accident or two, but even this muscle-bound leaping Lena won't crawl over those trucks. Just how did you plan to help us make speed across the city by plugging traffic hopelessly?"
"Get in, and we'll start. I'll show you what I had in mind." Penton grinned. Pipeline and Pipeliness tumbled over Penton as he climbed in after Blake. Cautiously Blake tested the controls, a little lever running back and forth in a slot, a transverse bar that controlled direction, a single foot pedal that applied a friction brake. The car moved forward with a steady, smooth thrust as he advanced the lever in the slot.
The wheels turned, and they were driving out through the great door. Trucks, blocks of huge trucks stood in the street, bleating feebly on high-pitched horns that echoed unhappily in the thin air. The soft whine -of the blower under them Was scarcely audible.
"You can get through with this small car where those bulky things can't-er, wiggle a muscle. Turn right when you get out of this drive, and make time."
Five small cars loaded with uniformed guards were weaving through the lines of stalled trucks, sirens howling angrily. A path was opening up slowly, with much backing, twisting and turning on the part of the trucks.
"I think I'll park," suggested Blake, pulling to the curb.
The guards rushed by them, heading, very evidently, for the power house. More guards were rushing up from the opposite direction. Several more carloads, in fact.
"Nice of them." Blake grinned, putting the car in motion
again with a smooth, soundless rush. "They've opened a path for us."
"I hoped they would." Penton nodded. "Keep-"
"Hey-Ted-" Blake slowed the car savagely, cursing bitterly. "You back-handed idiot, we're headed the wrong way. That's the Assembly Building we just got out of up there."
"I was worried for a minute. Get going. Naturally it is; how did you hope to get through four successive lines of guardsmen? Four, very alert, very thoroughly organized lines? This place here, I hope, and suspect, is not guarded. Did you happen to recall that this is the one place on the planet where they know they won't find us? And that the failure of the power plant called all the guards available at headquarters for soothing innumerable traffic snarls, and other duties.
"And do you suppose they stopped to remember that we had two ultra-violet guns and two dis-guns in those space-suits? Not so, my lad. And forty lines of alert guardsmen won't argue with four weapons like that.
"You may drop me at the window there. Sure-the fence is ornamental and made of wood-I know. I haven't yet had a chance to get out all the splinters that remind me that I didn't quite jump over it."
Blake, smiling broadly, swung the car. The light wooden fence surrounding the broad, parked lawn dissolved in a hail of flying splinters as the car shot up the rise to the white stone building, its wheels skidding on slippery, crushed grass. It paused a moment under the huge windows, twenty feet from the ground, while Penton stepped out.
Four guardsmen stepped out of a door two hundred feet away, to see Penton flying upward in a leap that brought him to the window ledge. The guards retreated before the angry charge of a half ton of automobile. Their compressed air guns sent slugs that rebounded uselessly from the tough, thick plastic of its windows.
"The most recent weapon of civil defense," stated Pipeline dogmatically, "is expected to end the reign of automobile
bandits. This vehicle, made entirely of hard metals instead of plastics, is mounted on six wheels, each individually powered by its own motor of nine muscles. . . . Capable of a speed of nearly one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour it won't do any good. . . . Those bandits haven't got any respect for life at all and they'll probably hold up your warehouse one of these days. . . . Get up. ... I have to-"
Blake noted the cause of these remarks. It was made of metal, gray, hard metal. It had six smaller thick windows, and six large heavy wheels, under humped, bulging motors. Muscles or not, they drove the thing at a crazy pace, straight for the little car. Blake dodged desperately. The charging behemoth swerved angrily, its heavy, protruding ram held toward him steadily.
Six nine-muscled motors gave it acceleration almost equal to that of the light vehicle; a Callistan driver in a Cal-listan vehicle gave it the needed edge. Desperately Blake streaked along the wall of the building, almost in front of the heavy, armored car. Avoiding the dangerous, direct attack that Blake had hoped would pile it against the stout, stone wall, it paralleled his track, to squeeze him against the wall. Desperately he braked, hoping it would overshoot. The light car swerved, wagged almost, on slippery grass, front wheels locked far to the right. The heavier car tore through the slippery surface to gravel beneath; it held parallel to him exactly. Brakes off, and with the control at full speed ahead, the blower whined in sudden speed. The wheels slipped, gripped, and Blake's car leaped forward. Six-wheel drive gave the heavier car the edge, and only Earth-trained quickness of perception enabled Blake to reverse, slew completely around, and start madly back from the trap before the other was after him. Desperately he tore off across the lawn, glancing at the rear-vision mirror. Speed-perhaps in speed-There was an enormous black mushroom sprouting there on the lawn. Blake slowed gently and turned around. An enormous mushroom of impalpable dust, settling very slowly in even this thin air. And a huge cavity, twenty feet across
and unguessably deep where the armored car had been. Slowly Blake drove back toward the neat, round hole that had appeared in the wall of the Assembly Building. Penton climbed into the car.
"They have the telephones working again," he said cheerfully. "I don't think you did a very good job on the power plant. Here are your guns." Penton adjusted his somewhat, and put the blunt, heavily insulated muzzle against the windshield. A neat, round hole appeared, large enough to allow the gun's passage. Presently a duplicate port graced the side window. "But it's not all to the bad. As it is the airport officials will know what the disintegrator did to that armored car. I don't think they'll argue."
"The telephones working, eh?"
"Yes, somebody in a pink jacket with pale blue pants was yelling into one that all the guards were blind. I gave 'em a light dose of UV. They'll be all right in an hour. He was getting an answer, too."
Blake looked down. Callistans were slowly filtering back to the airport they had so recently and hastily deserted. The vast traffic snarl of the city was slowly straightening out as the power plant went back into operation, and signal lights, telephones and radios went back to work.
"They've formed what guards can still see around that ' metal you left," he reported. "I hope they are grateful."
"I know. We didn't have to leave it, but on the other hand, why not? We had those spare plates, about five hundred pounds of beryllium. They can get started, and treat older people, the sick, with the life-cells they can create with that. And-somehow, Rod, I want to keep friendly with those people. When we do get back to Earth, the things they can teach us will be worth knowing, and they are, fundamentally, a pretty decent bunch."
"Pretty decent bunch," agreed Pipeline, very proudly.
Only Blake could turn around; Penton was busy at the controls. He was silent for some seconds, then he spoke softly.
"Ted, my friend, we better make time for Ganymede."
"Ganymede? P'holkuun-" Penton started.
"And the shleath. No, we weren't popular. But we will be, we will be. Did you happen to think that no shleath could possibly digest Pipeline? Pipeline is made of boron. But Pipeline, on the other hand, would probably enjoy a meal of-"
"More borax?" hopefully suggested Pipeline.
"God forbid!" said Blake hastily. "Shleath, lots more shleath."
Penton looked up at Blake suddenly, and grinned.
"You are right, by Jupiter, they can! A shleath can't digest boron, of course, and they can destroy the shleath-but they can't! There are thousands of shleath, more-"
"Borax," pleaded Pipeliness. Somehow it sounded weak, and very satisfied.
"You," said Blake very softly, "don't know. The prof on Callisto said they were a very fecund race. If I had known, had I guessed what he meant, they would have got no borax on this ship. As it is-all I can suggest is that we hurry. Two Pipelines in this ship are pleasant, but-"
Slowly Penton looked down. Pipeliness was sitting proudly, if somewhat crampedly among some fifty, three-inch-long, six-legged, furry animals.
Fifty minute, friendly tails waved in pleasure.
"Borax?" suggested fifty small, very friendly, mental voices.
"No," said Penton softly, but very definitely. "Not, my friends, by a damn sight. Not until we hit Ganymede."