"Lester Del Rey - Pursuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

 His own face shocked him. It was the same lean, sharp featured face as ever, under the shock of
nondescript, sandy hair. His ears still stuck out too much, and his lips were a trifle too thin. It looked no
more than his thirty years; but it was a strained f ace, now - painted with weeks of fatigue, and grayish with
fear, sweat-streaked and with nervous tension in every corded tendon of his throat. His somewhat bony,
average height figure shook visibly as he climbed from the bed.
Hawkes stood fighting himself, trying to get back in the bed, but it was a losing battle. Something seemed
to swing up in the corner of the room, as if a shadow moved. He jerked his head toward it, but there was
nothing there.
He heard his breath gasping harshly, and his knuckles whitened. There was the taste of blood in the corner
of his mouth where he was biting his lips.
Get out! They'll be here at once! Leave - GO!


His hands were already fumbling with his underclothing. He drew on briefs jerkily, and grabbed for the
shirt and suit he had never seen before. He was no longer thinking, now. Blind panic was winning. He thrust
his feet into shoes, not bothering with socks.
A slip of paper fell from his coat, with big sprawled Greek letters. He saw only the last line as it fell to the
floor - some equation that ended with an infinity sign. Then psi and alpha, connected by a dash. The alpha
sign had been scratched out, and something written over it. He tried to reach it, and more papers spilled from
his coat pocket. The fear washed up more strongly. He forgot the papers. Even the cigarettes were too far
away for him to return to them. His wallet lay on the chair, and he barely grabbed it before the urge
overpowered him completely.
The doorknob slipped in his sweating hands, but he managed to turn it. The elevator wasn't at his floor,
and he couldn't stop for it. His feet pounded on the stairs, taking him down the three floors to the street at a
breakneck pace. The walls of the stairway seemed to be rushing together, as if trying to close the way. He
screamed at them, until they were behind, and he was charging out of the front door.
A half-drunken couple was coming in - a fat, older man and a slim girl he barely saw. He hit them,
throwing them aside. He jerked from the entrance. Cars were streaming down West End Avenue. He dashed
across, paying no attention to them. His rush carried him onto the opposite sidewalk. Then, finally, the blind
panic left him, and he was leaning against a building, gasping for breath, and wondering whether his heart
could endure the next beat.
Across the street, the fat man he had hit was coming after him. Hawkes gathered himself together to
apologize, but the words never came. A second, blinding horror hit at him, and his eyes darted up towards
the windows of his apartment.
It was only a tiny glow, at first, like a drop from the heart of a sun. Then, before he could more than blink,
it spread, until the whole apartment seemed to blaze. A gout of smoke poured from the shattering window,
and a dull concussion struck his ears.
The infernally bright flame flickered, leaped outward from the window, and died down almost as quickly
as it had come, leaving twisted, half-molten metal where the window frames had been.
They'd almost gotten him! Hawkes felt his legs weaken and quiver, while his eyes remained glued to the
spot that had lighted the whole street a second before. They'd tried - but he'd escaped in time.
It must have been a thermite bomb - nothing but thermite could be that hot. He had never imagined that
even such a bomb could give so much heat so quickly. Where? In the tape-recorder?
He waited numbly, expecting more fire, but the brief flame seemed to have died out completely. He shook
his head, unbelieving, and started to cross the street again, to survey the damage or to join the crowd that
was beginning to collect.
 The fear surged up in him again, halting his step as if he'd struck a physical barrier. With it came the
sound of an auto-horn, the button held down permanently. His eyes darted down the street, to see a long,
gray sedan with old-fashioned running-boards come around the corner on two wheels. Its brakes screeched,
and it skidded to a halt beside Hawkes' apartment building.