"Kuttner, Henry - Red Gem of Mercury" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

You looked like a goner to me."
Vane sat up and looked around. He realized that there were handcuffs on his
wrists. He was under a pine, and some distance away was what was left of the
cabin. It was like a house of cards that had collapsed. Only a miracle had
enabled Vane to survive.
He looked up and saw the blue-jowled, bulldog face of a guard. The man nodded
and jerked his thumb down the slope.
"There," he said. "That's what hit. Airship or something."
Vane looked, and his eyes widened with amazement. An airship--no! No Earthly
vessel, obviously. Shaped like a tear-drop, it had fallen thirty feet from the
cabin and had dug a crater out of the snowy ground. Its hull was split and riven
in a dozen places by the shock of the impact. A crystalline green powder
carpeted the ground and cloaked the trees for yards around.
The ship itself was perhaps twenty feet long, made of a dully-shining metal,
bluish in hue. The two remaining guards were busy, pulling something through a
yawning gap that split the hull.
The man standing over Vane bent and jerked the prisoner to his feet. "Somebody
was in it," he grunted. "Hurt or probably dead. Come along." Vane let himself be
pulled toward the wreck. Despite the sick hopelessness that filled him at his
capture, he was also conscious of an overwhelming curiosity. Would it be that
for the first time in human history a--spaceship had reached the Earth? And its
passenger--what would he be like?
The two guards were kneeling beside the body, one of them trying to force brandy
between the alien being's lips. Vane's captor halted behind them, his hand
tightly gripping the lawyer's arm. A whistle of amazement escaped his lips.
"Jeez!" he muttered. "What a freak!"
A freak, truly, Vane thought, in this world. Fully eight feet tall the being
was, man-shaped, with a tremendous barrel chest and thick legs jointed in
several places. The clothing was skin tight, ripped and torn to reveal greenish
skin that gleamed with pale radiance.
The lips, Vane saw, were broad, fleshy, and indigo-blue in color. And there was
but one eye; the other had vanished in a crimson smear that matched in hue the
red jewel that gleamed on the being's forehead.
Vane stared at the strange gem, conscious of an inexplicable fascination that
seemed to radiate from it. Larger than a hen's egg, it seemed to be embedded in
the greenish flesh of the bulging forehead and the bone beneath.
And--it lived!



Chapter 2
The Gift of Power



ONE guard took the bottle from the bluish lips. "It's dead," he said slowly. "I
don't--"
The monster groaned. The massive head turned. The single eye passed over the
faces of the four men. Vane felt an odd sense of shock as the weird gaze focused
briefly upon him.