"Edmond Hamilton - Calling Captain Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

fall.
teeth. "And they've got more speed than we тАУour only
Even so, the shock of impact nearly stunned Otho.
chance is to duck and dodge until we lose them."

17
 Edmond Hamilton тАУ CALLING CAPTAIN FUTURE

Groggily, after a moment, he staggered to his feet. the Brain to inspect.
"Devils of space, that was close!" he hissed panting- The furred body was heavy , as Otho slung it across
ly. his shoulders. But in his throbbing anxiety and anger,
He bent over his opponent, whose body had been he hardly felt its weight. Again he started across the
crushed beneath him. The Legionary lay still, instantly sands, intending to skirt around the city Syrtis to the
killed. hiding-place where the Comet waited.
Then Otho's eyes bulged from his head. He stared Only the stars' white eyes looked down on him.
down at the dead body as though unable to credit his Only the stars, and the whirling sand-devils that glided
senses. before the night winds and whispered of the mysteries
"Am I going crazy?" he exclaimed to himself. "How of old Mars.
in the name of the nine worlds тАУ" Otho kept well out from the lighted towers of Syrtis.
An incredible, unnervingly fantastic thing had hap- And finally he stumbled up to the gleaming, quiescent
pened. bulk of the Comet, lying silent between the concealing
The Legionary with whom Otho had struggled had sand dunes.
been an Earthman. As they had fought up there in the He touched the secret button in its side and the door
door of the ship, as they had fallen in the starlight, Otho slid open. Otho stumbled in, and dropped the body on
had seen that clearly. the floor.
But now, in death, the Legion of Doom man had The compact laboratory in the mid-section of the
magically changed into a creature of weird and un- Comet was in semi-darkness. The Brain was peering
heard-of aspect. through the biggest telescope toward Sagittarius, while
His crushed body was now that of a semi-human be- Grag, the robot, was exposing photographic plates on a
ing covered from head to toe with short, thick white smaller telescope at the Brain's directions.
fur! The feet were two-toed, and the grotesque hands Grag's great metal figure turned quickly, and the
two-fingered. The head itself was a flattened, unhuman lens-eyes of the Brain turned to see also, as Otho en-
one, even the face covered with white fur. There were tered.
two eyes, huge, black, pupil-less orbs staring in death. "It's me тАУ Otho!" the android said hastily, seeing that
The creature wore a leather harness. To its belt had they did not recognize him in the Martian disguise.
been attached a cylindrical metal instrument or weapon, Simon Wright guessed instantly from Otho's bat-
but this had been crushed to fragments by the shock of tered appearance that something was wrong.
impact. "Where is Curtis?" the Brain rasped sharply.
"Have I gone delirious from the shock?" gasped Otho gulped. "They've got him тАУ the Legion of
Otho. "I can't be seeing this!" Doom. It was my fault, partly."
Then a far-off, dying drone of rocket-tubes recalled The android told rapidly what had happened. When
his attention. He looked up and saw the Legion of he had finished, there burst from Grag a booming roar
Doom cruiser, a tiny black spot, rocketing up into the of rage.
starry sky and disappearing. The great robot, his photo-electric eyes blazing, ad-
Wild dismay and anger filled the android's mind at vanced ominously toward the crestfallen android.
the sight. "You let them take him?" boomed Grag. He
"They're gone тАУ with the chief their prisoner! And clenched huge metal fists furiously. "I told the master
there's no telling where they're taking him!" you would get him into trouble! I wanted him to take
His rubbery body, still in its Martian disguise, was me. But no, you talked him into taking you. I knew this
rigid in impotent wrath. would happen!"