"Edmond Hamilton - The Futuremen Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

Captain Future had penetrated into one of the cav-
erns of Uranus' chasmed abysses, with Grag. The out-
laws Curt was after blew up the tunnel entrance to that
cave.
Captain Future would have been crushed beneath
falling rock had not Grag, with his superhuman
strength, held up the masses of falling stone until his
master could jump clear. Grag himself was crushed be-
neath the rock, but Captain Future dug him out later,
and the great weld-scar on his back is his memento of
the adventure.
NO SENSE OF HUMOR
Grag has no sense of humor, as humans know it. He
is puzzled sometimes by Curt's jokes or the sly drollery
of Otho. And that makes him uneasy, for the robot's
great ambition is to be human in everything.
His happiest moments have been when Captain Fu-
ture has told him, "Grag, you are more human than
most humans I know."
Huge, incredible in strength, his great metal head
towering high, his photoelectric eyes gleaming and his
mighty metal arms raised, Grag is a terrible figure to
evildoers when he goes into battle at the side of Captain
Future and Otho.
And woe betide the person whom Grag suspects of
trying to harm his master!
3
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 2 - The Synthetic Man
THO, the android or synthetic man, is the only
being of his kind in the Solar System. He is a
man who was never born, but was artificially
made!
O
In his natural form no one would mistake him for a
human being. For the android's arms and legs have a
rubbery, boneless look. His artificially created flesh is
pure white, not pink like human flesh. Otho's dead-
white face has no eyebrows or eyelashes, and there is
no hair whatever upon his well-shaped white head. In a
beltlike harness he carries his ray-pistols, make-up
pouch and other belongings.
Otho's face was carefully molded by his maker, Cap-
tain Future's father, before the final "setting" of his
flesh. The man-made features are regular, yet there is
something unusual about Otho's expression.
Like a cat's eyes, his jade-green orbs can see in dark-
ness. And there is a queer, alien humor, a gay, mocking
deviltry in the cool way in which they stare.
THE WORLD'S FASTEST BEING
When Roger Newton and the Brain planned Otho's