"The World Jones Made" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Eying Jones intently, Kaminski said: "Every life form has its own typical needs . . . what's a ruined waste to us is a fertile valley to something else. Isn't that so?"

"Earth is the only fertile planet," Jones repeated, with absolute conviction. "They want Earth. That's what they're here for."

Silence.

So that was it. There it stood, the terrifying spectre they all dreaded. This was what they existed to destroy; this was what they had been set up to catch--before it was too big to catch. It stood before them; sat, rather. Jones had again seated himself; now he sat smoking jerkily, thin face distorted, a dark vein in his forehead pulsing. Behind his glasses his furiously-bright eyes had filmed over, cloudy with passion. Tangled hair, ragged black beard, a rumpled man with elongated arms, skinny legs ... a man with infinite power. A man with infinite hatred.

"You really hate them," Cussick said wonderingly.

Mutely, Jones nodded.

"But you don't know anything about them, do you?"

"They're there," Jones said brittlely. "They're all around us. Encircling us. Closing in. Can't you see their plans? Coming across space, century after century . . . working out their schemes, landing first on Pluto, on Mercury, coming closer all the time. Nearer to the prize: setting up bases for attack."

"Attack," Kaminski repeated softly, cunningly. "You know this? You have proof? Or is this just a wild idea?"

"Six months from this date," Jones stated, his voice pinched and metallic, "the first drifter will land on Earth."

"Our scouts have landed on all the planets," Kaminski pointed out, but his silky assurance was gone. "Does that mean we're invading them?"

"We're there," Jones said, "because those planets are ours. We're looking them over." Raising his eyes, he finished: "And that's what the drifters are doing, They're looking over Earth. Right now, they're looking us over. Can't you feel their eyes on us? Filthy, loathsome, alien, insect eyes . . "

Horrified, Cussick said: "He's pathological."

"Can you see this?" Kaminski pursued.

"I know it."

"But you see it? You see an invasion? Destruction? Drifters taking over Earth?"

"Within a year," Jones stated, "there'll be drifters landing everywhere. Every day of the week. Ten here, twenty there. Hordes of them. All identical. Mindless hordes of filthy alien beings."

With an effort, Pearson said: "Sitting next to us in busses, I take it. Wanting to marry our daughters--right?"

Jones must have anticipated the remark; a second before Pearson spoke, the man's face went chalk-white, and he gripped convulsively at the arms of his chair. Fighting with himself, struggling to keep control, he answered between his teeth: "People aren't going to stand for it, friend. I can see that. There's going to be burnings. Those drifters are dry, friend. They burn well. There's going to be lots of cleaning up to do."

Kaminski swore softly, furiously. "Let me out of here," he began saying, to nobody in particular. "I can't stand it."

"Take it easy," Pearson said sharply.

"No, I can't stand it." Futilely, Kaminski paced around in a circle. "There's nothing we can do! We can't touch him--he really sees these things. He's safe from us--and he knows it."


It was early night. Cussick and Pearson stood together in the dark corridor of the top floor of the police offices. A few paces away a dispatch carrier waited, his face bland beneath his steel helmet.

"Well," Pearson began. He shivered. "This hall is cold. Why don't you and your wife come over to my place for dinner? We can talk, sit around, discuss things."

Cussick said: "Thanks, I'd like to. You haven't met Nina."