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

The black rock glinted under the faint silver light of an immensely distant, heatless sun.
"That light is just strong enough to show how bleak this place is. There isn't even snow to cover its bare bones."
Penton nodded.
"It rains quite frequently, I imagine. Rains liquid hydrogen. In the course of ages, that rain has washed all the snow into the rivers and oceans, and now it's piled up in mountain ranges. Like that." His head nodded grotesquely in his transparent helmet, bowing toward the chalky cliff of frozen nitrogen. "I'm going to test that black rock."
Penton set up the camera with Blake's help, then leveled the proton gun and fired at the huge vein of black rock that jutted up. The rock flamed into an inferno of heat, swirled madly in tornadoes of protons, and relapsed into scintillating vapor. Penton pressed the trigger of the camera with a clumsy, gloved finger.
"Now, the greenish-gray-"
"Penton," said Blake faintly, "did you notice those rounded rocks?"
Ted Penton turned his eyes toward his friend.
"Yes, there are hundreds of 'em-all over. I'm going to test-"
"They moved," stated Blake. "I saw 'em."
Penton looked at him thoughtfully.
"You saw shadows. That swirling gas-"
"They," said Blake pointedly, "are moving."
Penton looked closely toward one of the ten-foot, irregularly rounded boulders. Very, very slowly it was changing its shape. A dozen near it were changing shape. As they changed, they rolled slowly, irregularly toward the dying glow in the rocky cliff-face.
"Great guns!" gasped Penton. "They-they're alive!"
Blake yelled and jumped clumsily under the heavier gravity. Penton turned with leveled proton gun, then lowered it slowly. Blake was heading rapidly toward a narrow, deep crevice in the wall of the cliff, a fault between two immense masses of the solid, black rock. Behind him, rolling very slowly over the spot where he had stood, a ten-foot "boulder" stopped indecisively, changed shape slowly, flattening into stability.
"If you must yell, Rod," said Penton sharply, "disconnect your transceiver first. They can't move fast enough to catch anything, so come out of hiding."
Blake came out of the deep crevice sheepishly. "It startled me, damn it. Hell, it's enough of a shock to see a boulder start walking, but when the darned thing suddenly touches you from behind-"
He stopped, then turned and raced madly for the little series of islands giving access to the far side of the stream and lake, where the ship rested. Penton stared, then followed the direction of Blake's eyes.
From out of the dimness beyond the horizon of the vast plain, something was coming. Dozens of Things. No creeping slowness, but a savage, swift motion. Immense Things in incredible action on an impossible world. From dimness that
stretched to unseen horizons, they rolled up. Already Blake had fled halfway to the tiny islands that served as stepping stones.
"Blake, stop, you won't make it," he warned. "Come back." Blake's labored running slowed to a halt. Then his instinctive, quick-calculating mind summed up the situation. With equal speed he rejoined Penton.
"From the looks of things, let's head for the crevice there." He panted. "And pray God they go for us instead of the ship."
"We're all right, I think. We can wait on this side of the lake. What in God's name are they-I never saw a vehicle like that before."
The vast Things were slowing down somewhat and came into clearer focus now. Sunlight showed them only vaguely, huge things, a hundred feet long and thirty in diameter, immense cylinders of utter, jet black rolling swiftly across the level plain. Their very blackness made them almost invisible against the dark plain. They were black with the blackness of space itself; an utter, total absorption of every ray of light that struck them.
The first rolled up, hitching itself strangely to curve its path.
"The ship," said Penton tensely. "They're after the ship. I wonder-" He leveled the proton projector, and pressed the button. A slim, solid line of glowing light lanced out across the tiny lake, and struck the vast thing of blackness. Instantly it recoiled. A spot of furious incandescence boiled on its side, a spot twenty feet across. It quivered into motion-lessness.
A strange limpness came over it, and simultaneously the jet blackness left it, replaced by a slate-blue color. It deflated like a balloon just needled, flattening out until one edge touched the lake of hydrogen. The liquid boiled furiously, hissing violently. Clouds of vapor rolled up, to be whipped away by the thin, keen wind.
The second and third and fourth changed their courses and rolled swiftly, not toward the ship, but toward the slate-
blue hulk that slumped like a dropped cylinder of putty on the shore. Black bulks squirmed over it, hiding it.
Half a dozen others had arrived. They squirmed vainly for a place beside the dead thing, and rolled on away toward the ship. Penton's proton gun lanced out again, again -five times. Five huge things writhed, then slumped in death, steaming faintly. Others piled on them. Frantically, Blake joined in the slaughter. Scores, hundreds of the beasts rolled up from dimness, sailing madly, blithely into death and destruction. Wildly they piled against the dead bulks of then-brothers, hiding the slaty carcasses under heaving, whale-like masses of jet flesh.
Penton sighed at last and lowered his gun.
"Stop, Blake," he said. "It's useless. There are hundreds more coming and our guns are about exhausted. I get it now. They'll just come from all over that plain. It's heat."
"Heat?"
"They're living animals and they live on it." Penton nodded wearily. Just pray that the ship's up to it. We built her with a powerful frame, and there's only a certain number of those brutes can touch her at once."
"But-why? They're utterly unafraid-"
"They have nothing to be afraid of-or never have had. They don't understand fear. Look. Ten of them on the ship now. Will it take it-"
The huge bulks squirmed and writhed their way over each other, over the ship. Others pushed and squirmed in faintly audible squealings and gruntings, seeking to reach the warm metal sides of the ship.
"Heat," Penton sighed. "They must live on it. They're warm-blooded-boiling-blooded, you might almost say. Somehow, that black hide of theirs is heat-proof while they're alive but releases its heat when they die. Look, they're leaving that first one we killed. It's frozen solid."
Ill MIND OVER MATTER
BLAKE LOOKED thoughtfully toward the huge, shapeless mound that surmounted their little spaceship.
"You know, we made that ship strong as blazes. It'll stand an awful strain, but I don't know that it will stand that strain when the metal's been made brittle by this temperature. And-if that ship is broken down- Well, the Martians were the last people even to see this planet, let alone visit it!"
"It won't break," Penton said decisively. "The atomic engines are fueled for about twelve months, and until their power gives out, the currents we established in the walls will prevent it from cooling. That's not what's bothering me, though. What I want to know is how we are going to get in. Just go over and nudge one of those little land whales and say, "Would you step aside for a moment, sir, while we move in?"
"We're hot," said Blake, "and I don't mean we're good. If we get anywhere near them, they'll probably start trying to cuddle with us. They-"
"Will," said Penton, looking behind him. "They've spotted us."
A half-dozen of the bulks stirred uneasily, switching, and moving clumsily. Then, broadside on, they started rolling toward the two men on the most direct line-through the lake of liquid hydrogen.
"They'll drown in that," pronounced Blake.
"Or freeze. I-" Penton stopped. The first one had rolled into the liquid, sending it splashing in rainbow showers of ultra-cold. It rolled smoothly on into the lake, going deeper and deeper, until it was fully twenty feet deep in the stuff. Then, it stopped. Blake stared open-mouthed as the huge, blunt end of the vast cylinder of apparently brainless flesh
split. As though hinged, an immense, thick flap of black, leathery hide rolled down, and instead of the leathery, featureless cylinder-end, a whole assortment of organs appeared.
First was a tube, fully two feet in diameter, that shot out like an elephant's trunk, to dip into that inconceivably frigid lake. The mobile liquid swirled and bubbled, twisting in vortices. With a tremendous smack, audible in even that thin, chill air, the tube broke contact with the surface of the liquid.