"Henry Kuttner - Beauty and the Beast UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

A huge foreleg lifted and began to trace a design in the dirt of the farmyard. A circle formed, and another. In time, a map of the solar system was clear.
"Look at the way it's pawing," Mrs. Kirth said. "Like a bull getting ready to charge. Jay-watch out!"
"I'm watching," Kirth said grimly. And he lifted the gun.
The Beast drew back, without fear, but waiting for the man to see the design. Yet Kirth's eyes saw only a meaningless maze of concentric circles. He walked slowly forward, his boots obliterating the design.
"He did not notice it," the Beast thought. "I must try again. Surely it will be easy to make him understand. In such a highly organized civilization, only a scientist would have been entrusted widi my care."
Remembering the gesture of greeting among Earthmen, the Beast lifted a foreleg and slowly extended it. Shaking hands was fantastically impossible, but Kirth would recognize the significance of the motion.
Instead, Kirth fired. The bullet ripped along the Beast's skull, a painful though not dangerous wound. The Beast instantly withdrew its paw.
The man did not understand. Perhaps it thought harm had been offered, had read menace in the friendly gesture. The Beast lowered its head in a motion of submission.
At sight of that frightful mask swooping down, Mrs. Kirth broke through her paralysis of terror. She shrieked in an agony of fear and turned to flee. Kirth, yelling hysterical oaths, pumped bullet after bullet at the reptile.
The Beast turned clumsily. It was not hurt, but there was danger here. Attempting to escape without damaging the frail structures all around, it managed to step on a pigsty, ruin a silo, and crush in one wall of the farmhouse.
But this could not be helped. The Beast retreated and was lost in the night.
The inhuman brain was puzzled. What had gone wrong now? Earthmen were intelligent, yet they had not understood. Perhaps the fault lay with itself. Full maturity had not been reached; the thought-patterns were still not set in dieir former matrices. The fogs that shrouded the reptile's mind were not yet completely dissipated. . . .
Growth! Maturity! That was necessary. Once maturity had been achieved, the Beast could meet Earthmen on equal terms and make them understand. But food was necessary. . . .
The Beast lumbered on through the moonlit gloom. It went like a behemoth through fences and plowed fields, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake. At first it tried to keep to roads, but the concrete and asphalt were shattered beneath the vast weight. So it gave up that plan, and headed for the distant mountains.
A shouting grew behind it. Red light flared. Searchlights began to sweep the sky. But this tumult died as the Beast drove farther and farther into the mountains. For a time, it must avoid men. It must concentrate on-food!
The Beast liked the taste of flesh, but it also understood the rights of property. Animals were owned by men. Therefore they must not be molested. But plants-cellulose-almost anything was fuel for growth. Even the limbs of trees were digestible.
So the colossus roamed the wilderness. Deer and cougars it caught and ate, but mostly vegetation. Once, it saw an airplane droning overhead, and after that more planes came, dropping bombs. But after sundown, the Beast managed to escape.
It grew unimaginably. Some effect of the sun's actinic rays, not filtered as on cloud-veiled Venus, made the Beast grow far beyond the size it had been on Venus eons ago. It grew larger than the vastest dinosaur that ever stalked through the swamps of Earth's dawn, a titanic, nightmare juggernaut out of the Apocalypse. It looked like a walking mountain. And, inevitably, it became clumsier.
The pull of gravity was a serious handicap. Walking was painful work. Climbing slopes, dragging its huge body, was agony. No more could the Beast catch deer. They fleedy evaded the ponderous movements.
Inevitably, such a creature could not escape detection. More planes came, widi bombs. The Beast was wounded again, and realized the necessity of communicating with Earthmen without delay. Maturity had been reached. . . .
There was something of vital importance that Earthmen must know. Life had been given to die Beast by Eardimen, and that was a debt to be repaid.
The Beast came out of the mountains. It came by night, and traveled swifdy, searching for a city. There, it knew, was the best chance of finding understanding. The giant's stride shook die earth as it thundered dirough die dark.
On and on it went. So swift was its progress that the bombers did not find it till dawn. Then die bombs fell, and more dian one found its mark.
But die wounds were superficial. The Beast was a mighty, armored Juggernaut, and such a diing may not be easily slain. It felt a pain, however, and moved faster. The men in die
sky, riding dieir air-chariots, did not understand-but somewhere would be men of science. Somewhere. . . .
And so the Beast came to Washington.
Strangely, it recognized die Capitol. Yet it was, perhaps, natural, for the Beast had learned English, and had listened to Kirdi's televisor for months. Descriptions of Washington had been broadcast, and the Beast knew diat this was the center of government in America. Here, if anywhere on Eardi, diere would be men who understood. Here were die rulers, the wise men. And despite its wounds, die Beast felt a dirill of exultation as it sped on.
The planes dived diunderously. The aerial torpedoes screamed down. Crashing diey came, ripping flesh from diat titanic armored body.
"It's stopped!" said a pilot, a diousand feet above die Beast. "I diink we've killed it! Thank God it didn't get into die city-"
The Beast stirred into slow movement. The fires of pain bathed it. The reptilian nerves sent dieir unmistakable messages to die brain, and the Beast knew it had been wounded unto deadi. Strangely it felt no hate for die men who had slain it.
No-they could not be blamed. They had not known. And, after all, humans had taken the Beast from Venus, restored it to life, tended and fed it for months. . . .
And diere was still a debt. There was a message that Earth-men must know. Before die Beast died, it must convey diat message, somehow.
The saucer eyes saw the white dome of the Capitol in die distance. There could be found science, and understanding. But it was so far away!
The Beast rose. It charged forward. There was no time to consider die fragility of die man-made structures all around. The message was more important.
The bellow of thunder marked die Beast's progress. Clouds
of ruin rose up from toppling buildings. Marble and granite were not the iron-hard stone of Venus, and a trail of destruction led toward the Capitol. The planes followed in uncertainty. They dared not loose bombs above Washington.
Near the Capitol was a tall derricklike tower. It had been built for the accommodation of newscasters and photographers, but now it served a different purpose. A machine had been set up there hastily, and men frantically worked connecting power cables. A lens-shaped projector, gleaming in the sunlight, was swinging slowly to focus on the oncoming monster. It resembled a great eye, high above Washington.
It was a heat ray.
It was one of the first in existence, and if it could not stop the reptile, nothing could.
Still the Beast came on. Its vitality was going fast, but there would still be time. Time to convey its message to the men in the Capitol, the men who would understand.
From doomed Washington arose a cry, from ten thousand panic-strained throats. In the streets men and women fought and struggled and fled from the oncoming monster that towered against the sky, colossal and horrible.
On the tower soldiers worked at the projector, connecting, tightening, barking sharp orders.
The Beast halted. It paused before the Capitol. From the structure, men were fleeing. . . .
The fogs were creeping up to shroud the reptile brain. The Beast fought against increasing lassitude. The message-the message!
A mighty forepaw reached out. The Beast had forgotten Earth's gravity, and the clumsiness of its own gross bulk.
The massive paw crashed through the Capitol's dome!
Simultaneously the heat ray flashed out blindly. It swept up and bathed the Beast in flaming brilliance.
For a heartbeat the tableau held, the colossus towering above the nation's Capitol. Then the Beast fell. . . .
In death, it was terrible beyond imagination. The heat ray crumpled it amid twisted iron girders. The Capitol itself was shattered into utter ruin. For blocks buildings collapsed, and clouds of dust billowed up in a thick, shrouding veil.
The clouds were blinding, like the mists that darkened the sight and the mind of the Beast. For the reptile was not yet dead. Unable to move, the life ebbing swiftly from it, the Beast yet strove to stretch out one monstrous paw. . . .