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

THE TENTH WORLD
I SHLEATH vs. PIPELINE
CAUTIOUSLY, Penton looked around the corner of the building. In the west, Jupiter was setting; here, on Ganymede, complete darkness would come in a few moments.
"No one in sight," he whispered. "For God's sake, don't start concentrating, Blake. Those boys are catching on to telepathy too fast. If they don't hear us, they may telepath us if you think so blasted hard. Hurry up."
Blake hitched his pack into a more comfortable position, and the two set off hurriedly, noiselessly down the broad, deserted avenue. Two blocks they passed silently, to turn down a narrow, rubbish-choked alley. Jupiter's light faded altogether, and they had to pick their way with utmost care. Six blocks they traversed without disturbance-then abruptly a squeaking flurry of shuffling, running steps darted out from under some rubbish. Dim light reflected from the clouded sky overhead showed a two-foot, glistening mass of evilly
furious protoplasm racing down the alley toward them, squealing in helpless fury.
Behind it, silent as death, but with a broad grin of eagerness on its homely face, came a six-legged creature built on the general lines of a dachshund. The protoplasm darted under some rubbish; the six-legged dog clawed after it, the piled boards exploding in a dozen directions, to fall with a furious clatter.
There was a moment of savage squalling, and sodden gulping sounds, while the two men shrank back into protecting shadows. Somewhere a window went up, and a Lanoor's voice shrilled curses into the silence of the night.
The six-legged animal came out from the mass of rubbish presently, its head high, walking with a slow, rather labored step. Its belly had expanded miraculously, until the six short legs barely held it from the ground. Its keen nose detected the man, and, for a moment, it sniffed at them briefly, tail wagging, before it went on about its business. Two more of the animals trotted down the alley alertly, paused a moment to watch the first, and turned away disappointed.
"One of Pipeline's innumerable progeny can make more noise chasing down a shleath, than any single animal I ever before encountered," Blake said with intent bitterness. "Can we move now, do you think?"
"It isn't the hexapods, it's the shleath that do the squalling." Penton reproved him.
"It wasn't the shleath's idea to throw that lumber around. From what I saw, its primary interest was getting under there and staying, very quiet and peaceable."
"Shut up and move. Somebody may come to see if the shleath were all eaten, or only part. We have to get out of here while we can-" Penton turned down the next intersecting street; together they dodged through the sleeping city. Half a mile they went, then gradually, as they neared the airport, more life appeared. Ships from cities half
around the world, and still in daylight, were active, and the air-force crew had to be up.
"Man, what I'd give for some of those sleep-gas bombs they used on us the first time we landed," sighed Penton. "There's a dozen Civil Guards standing about our spaceship."
"You said you'd get through somehow." Blake shrugged. "Get going. It's almost light."
Penton glowered at him, and sat down in the shadow of a low, spreading, bushlike tree. From the knapsack he carried, he pulled a number of small metal chips and cuttings, piled them on the sidewalk before him, and added a handful of filings. Then two waxy white cylinders half an inch through and three inches long. He rose to his feet and nodded toward Blake.
"All right, guy, get moving."
A flash of electric current snapped from an atomic flashlight in his hand, touched the metal chips, and they burst into sudden, intense flame. Penton ran hastily into deeper shadows in the direction of the airport. The flare built up to a colossal, intolerable glare; voices over at the airport shouted, and gangling, seven-and-a-half-foot Lanoor Civil Guardsmen were racing toward the strange beacon.
Penton and Blake raced in the opposite direction. Every eye was focused on the weirdly brilliant flare Penton had just made. Windows were clattering open in nearby houses, curious voices calling out. The Earthmen slipped down the side of the huge hangar, rounded a turn, and jumped to their ship. In an instant, Penton had the lockdoor open, and was struggling at the inner door.
The combination dial delayed him, slow turns that must be accurate.
"The flare's burned out," Blake said softly. "They-" A sudden new shout went up, and the Civil Guards were Streaming back across the field toward them, their arms waving frantically. From the nearer barracks, a score of Guardsmen burst out, half-dressed and holding up drag-
ging clothes with one hand, blunt weapons waving in the other.
A monstrous eye winked lazily, redly, across the field at them, then opened fully in a blinding pencil of light that pinned them like insect specimens on the broad, blue-green turf of the flying field.
The inner door opened as Penton threw a lever. Simultaneously the outer door swung shut on rubber grommets. A score of men shouting outside were suddenly silenced. Pen-ton dived through the widening crack, twisted up the main corridor to the control room.
A moment later the atomic engines tchked twice in gentle reproof as relays closed, and began to sing softly of empty spaces. The ship trembled slightly, and when Blake reached the window, a patchwork field was dwindling swiftly below. A dozen, then a score of great beams of light laced across the city, swinging back and forth in slow majesty.
Penton settled back in the pilot seat comfortably, with a deep sigh. He snapped on the automatic controls, and hauled the knapsack off his back.
"Was I mistaken, or did I see Pipeline making a mad dash to join us just before we left?"
Blake chuckled.
"You weren't mistaken, but I guess the borax did the trick. The greedy little hog couldn't leave to follow us until he had eaten it all. But I told you he'd find where we were going."
Penton smiled. "Maybe," he punned, "a hexapod can trail a man by his sense, the way a bloodhound trails a man by his scents. They have telepathic power."
Blake looked at him sourly.
"Lousy, if I may say so. Are any planes trying to follow us?"
Penton shook his head.
"Not now. We're about fifty miles up, and going farther rapidly-ah, there's the sun." A burst of light struck through the control window as the spaceship shot out of the shadow
of Ganymede. "Poor PTiolkuun. In some ways it seems like a sort of dirty trick. The poor guy's been sweating for three days over that speech thanking us for exterminating the shleath."
Blake groaned.
" 'Farewell-come again-we've been glad to see you.' That's all right. But when an orator works himself into a foaming frenzy and calls us the 'saviours of our civilization' and 'the destroyers of the tyrannous Shaloor overlords,' to wind up in a burst of rhetorical glory on 'the greatest, the final blessing, the gift of the hexapods which have freed us from the terrible menace of the shleath'-I quit. Personally, I'll bet P'holkuun was glad to be quit, too. I like that guy, blue-haired beanpole or not, and I'll bet he was no happier trying to prepare that speech than we were trying to work up nerve enough to sit through it. I-hey-we're on the daylight side of Ganymede."
Penton rose a bit in his seat, and looked down through the window, thoughtfully.
"So we are. Also, if you observe carefully, getting further toward that side. I'm going to step up to a full Earth-normal acceleration, so grab hold."
The ship was suddenly pulling harder, as the acceleration increased from only slightly more than the equal of Gany-median gravity to equal Earth's gravitational acceleration. "My Lord, I'm heavy," Blake grunted. His feet seemed strangely stuck to the floor, and as he walked across the room, his motions were curiously jerky. "Three months on that light world plays hell with your sense of timing.
"But look-we're on the daylight side of Ganymede. And Jupiter off there, and there's Callisto and the rest-well, for where are we bound?"
Penton looked at him for a moment, frowning, then a light seemed to dawn. His expression showed only annoyed disgust.
"For the love of space. Now I get it. The Tenth World,
of course."
"Which," Blake pointed out, "is outside of Pluto's orbit-
further from the Sun. Since we started from the night side of Ganymede, and are now on the day side, we're heading toward the sun, not away from it. Or, to bring up an old stickler, was Loshthu a thushol, not a real Martian-"
"In either case he'd be a real Martian, since a thushol is just as truly a Martian animal as is the centaur," Penton pointed out, Taut you are just slightly off the track. We are headed toward the sun. Jupiter and the Tenth World are on opposite sides of the sun at the particular moment, if those Martian records weren't wrong, and I haven't made too many slips covering the transformations."
"Oh," said Blake softly. "Did you find out just where and what it was? You didn't tell me much."
"You were too busy playing with the food for the ship. The Martian expedition to Pluto first spotted it-the two planets happened to be nearly in conjunction then, and they have a good orbit calculation. It's in terms of Martian days, hours, minutes, and years, though. I don't know what day, hour and minute it is on Mars. I made rough calculations, and know about where the planet is, which is what we will have to go on. It was never visited, but it's five and two-thirds billions of miles out."