"Leinster, Murray - Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

She was sitting in a chair Ben had insulated from the floor. At regular intervals, Ben took a Geiger counter reading. Always the counter clattered. The metabolism of the Thing involved -the production of cosmic rays. Electric metabolism. The Thing was, in fact, an organization of electric charges. Since electric charges are essential to cellular lifeЧsuch as human lifeЧthe Thing was not impossible. Electric charges in association with matter produce Terrestrial life, and the removal of the charges leaves merely dead matter. The first elucidation of ball lightning showed that energy alone can achieve organization and self-determined dimensions. So a creature which was merely an electrical pattern was not incredible.
Therefore the insulated chair. For hours after the first exploratory departure of the Thing from SallyТs body, they had hoped it would repeat its excursion. It had seemed curious about apparatus. Ben insulated the chair and brought out piece after piece of apparatus-everything from his cameras to the hand positron-beam projector which was the only weapon on the ship. He had Sally go near them. He had her touch them. He hoped that curiosity would lure the Thing into a second journey of investigation. But there was no sign. The Geiger counter aimed at SallyТs
body clattered at the same rate, neither greater nor less. She said, her voice shaking a little, that she felt a sensation within her as of something which was eager, but very patient, and very contented despite its eagerness. Purring.
It was a disappointment. But the problem was not one of orthodox medicine, of ultra-microscopic organisms and the intricate interplay of enzymes, cells, and all the innumerable compounds of the body. This was a problem of a Thing. So Sally sat in an insulated chair. For three days.
УI donТt know how intelligent it is,Ф said Ben grimly, on the second day. УI doubt if its IQ could be estimated. But it has curiosity, it makes decisions, and it has emotion. Maybe some superorthodox scientist would say we still havenТt proof that itТs really alive, but IТll let it go at that. The Thing is a form of life which can exist apart from any specific bit of matter, but it is not independent of matter. It has to inhabit some bit or other. It prefers you to a bar of metal, or to me. You will die if it stays in your body long enough. Then it will doubtless hunt for another body. That must be what happened on Pharona. And it must reproduce, because itТs alive. But on your journey from Pharona here it didnТt. It doesnТt seem to be nowЧbecause this is a long time. Maybe it realizes that youТre the only woman here, and if you dieЧ It looks like it somehow feeds on the vital energy of your body. It canТt get that energy from me or from metal. ItТs. . . cannibalistic. It is life which feeds on other life. Your life. I wish it would try to take mine!Ф
Sally spoke very wearily from the insulated chair.
УI think itТs hopeless,Ф she said in a low voice. УThereТs only one of the Things, but itТs going to kill me. We canТt stop it. I could put on an insulated spacesuitЧit can oniy move through a conductorЧwhile IТm in this chair. It would be imprisoned, then. I could walk about, and it couldnТt escape me. And I could go out the air lock andЧthe Thing could never harm anybody. But we. . . we couldnТt ever land anywhere with this Thing alive. We couldnТt loose a plague on another planet like the one which was loosed on Pharona! I. . . was there, Ben!Ф
Ben said fiercely:
УDo you think IТd let you walk out of the lock? Do you think IТd leave you in space?Ф
УIТd like it,Ф she said humbly, Уif youТd turn a positron beam on me instead.Ф -
УIТm waiting to use the positron beam on that Thing,Ф said Ben grimly. УHow do you feel?Ф
УAll right, I guess. But IТm not comfortable. The Thing isnТt quite as contented.Ф
He nodded. His jaw set.
УMaybe weТre getting somewhere. It must be a pattern of free electrons, bound into an organization which is alive. It canТt be anything else! But its metabolism involves the production of cosmics rays. Making cosmic rays involve6 the production of positive charges. Insulated as you are, youТre
accumulating a positive charge that sooner or later is going to try to bind some of the free but organized electrons this Thing is made of. Maybe itТll die without knowing what is happening. It acts as a disease to humans. Maybe weТve concocted a disease or a poison for it.Ф
Ben could not touch Sally, lest he discharge. the positive potential they were building upЧor allowing the Thing to build up for its own destruction. They were trying to kill it by the product of its own metabolism; to suffocate it by the positive electricity it created, just as a human being will suffocate in the carbon dioxide he must exhale.
But Sally seemed to shrink into herself. She spoke rarely, and then in a strained voice. At last, on the third day, she spoke in a sudden gasp.
УIТm.. . sorry, Ben, but I canТt stand it any longer. The Thing is suffering and itТs making me suffer. I canТt stand any more!Ф
Ben reached out to touch her wrist. On the instant her wrist glowed. The Thing gathered itself together, it concentrated itself to escape. It was visible even in the lighted cabin. At the touch of BenТs finger a tiny spark jumped. That was all. But Sally almost fainted with relief. She tried to smile a wabbly smile.
УItТs.. . gone,Ф she said unsteadily. УWe drove it out. We. . . exorcised it, Ben.Ф -
Ben turned off the light. Sally vanished into the blessed darkness. He heard her sigh with relief so sharp that it was almost a sob.
УFor the second time,Ф she said, valiantly trying to be flippant, УI havenТt got the plague. How quaint!Ф
УSit still,Ф said Ben savagely. УWeТll watch for it. Positive electricity is poison to it. We know that, anyhow! And IТve got my positron pistol here. Watch for it!Ф
There was silence. The CC phone muttered, and muttered. There was one voice which was much louder than the rest. The muttering died away. The sound of SallyТs breathing grew steady and even. Presently she sighed deeply, and went on breathing evenly.
Then the bronze doorsill of the control-room door glowed whitely. The Thing, driven out of SallyТs body, was suddenly there. It was a patch of whitish luminosity which almost but not quite filled the whole length of the sill. In case of accident, an air-tight door would snap shut across the opening, sealing the ship into separate compartments. Ben raised the positron pistol. Tiny radium dots marked the sights, but his hand trembled with hatred. He took both of them to steady his weapon. He pulled the trigger.
There was a reddish glow from the pistol. No noise. Nothing else. That was all.
But the white luminescence on the doorsill flared unbearably. Ben had an extraordinary sensation, as if he had heard a soundless scream. And the Thing went mad. It was here and there and everywhere. Every particle of bare metal in the control room seemed to flash as the Thing raced with incredible speed in a crazy, frenzied rush over every metallic path it had
traversed before. It could not be seen as an area of light, but it seemed as if all bare metal in sight emitted a wavy, lunatic glow.
Ben started suddenly. He raised the pistol. And abruptly there was no glow anywhere. The control room was normal. The dials of the instruments were visible, of course, but Sally could not be seen. -
УIf IТd pointed this beam anywhere at all and held it on,Ф said Ben bitterly, Уthe Thing might have run into it. But I didnТt think of it in time. -
He turned on the light again. Sally was asleep in the insulated chair in which she had endured for three days and nights. She was utterly relaxed. She looked unspeakably weary and pathetic, sleeping in the abandoned confidence of a child.
Ben looked down at her, and his face softened.
УMaybe itТs dead,Ф he told her quietly, Уand maybe itТs not. But itТll never get to you again!Ф
He went into the stateroom. He carefully and elaborately insulated the bunk there from any possible electrical connection with floor or side walls. He put on insulating shoes. He picked Sally up in his arms and carried her, still sleeping, and laid her on the bunk. He covered her. He kissed her very gently.
In the control-room a pale white glow appeared on the metal of the pilotТs chair. It rose to the top and stayed there. It was motionless, but it wavered in intensity. It seemed to throb a little. If Ben had been in the roomЧwhy just as he had felt a little while since that he felt a soundless scream of agony, now he would have felt hatred so terrible that the hackles at the back of his neck would have stirred.
He started back into the control room. The glow slid alertly down the metal parts of the chair. It was gone when he came through the door. Then it appeared suddenly in the stateroom. It went restlessly, ragingly, back and forth upon the metal walls. And the stateroom seemed to be filled with hatred also.

A space cruiser resignedly took up post in an orbit about the dark star Lamda BoЎtes. It would circle that star for six months and be relieved. Forty years before, a sub-commissioner had intended to change cruisers at that place, and commanded that one be here to meet him. He had later changed his plan of travel, but there was no order to withdraw the cruiser posted at the rendezvous. The first cruiser asked for relief after six months of utterly useless waiting. It was relieved by a cruiser under orders to take its place. Seventy-eight cruisers, in turn, had uselessly swung about the dark star for six months each because of an order given forty years before and never rescinded.
Highly unofficial gossip, told behind official palms, informed the subcommissioner of the Formaihaut sector that the sub-commissioner of the Markhab sector had said he was a fool. The sub-commissioner of the Formalhaut sector, in indignation, ordered that no clearances be issued to
spaceships to Markhab or from it. All space lanes in that part of the Galaxy passed through the two sectors. In consequence, the economic system -by which eight hundred millions of people lived was brought to a standstill.
The small sun Mu Aquila showed definite.signs of instabilityЧsigns which by the McPherson-Adair formula indicated an imminent internal explosion. There was no office of the Administrative Service on any of its planets, which altogether had a bare five million inhabitants. Notification of the impending nova-flare was sent to the nearest sector office, with the usual request for evacuation of all the planets which would be destroyed or made uninhabitable. A clerk, recently transferred to that sector and desirous of distinguishing himself, observed an error in the drafting of the request. He returned it for re-preparation before forwarding it for action. He failed to mark it УUrgent Official,Ф which meant that it went by ordinary mail and would not reach its destination for two months. Of course, the McPherson-Adair formula indicated that the explosion would take place in six to seven weeks. -
There was a plague on Pharona, and a quarantine prohibited any psivate or commercial ship to land on or leave it. But an Administrative Service vessel landed, bringing dispatches, and left again after taking all normal sanitary precautions. It landed on Galata, and cases of the plague were observed there within twelve hours.
And Ben Sholto still defied the Space Navy, the Administrative Service, and presumably the Galactic Commission itself by remaining alive.
Great, jagged, rocky fragments floated in space between the stars. In between the greater pieces were innumerable smaller bits. The little spacecraft wallowed in a stream of cosmic flotsam, sharing its motion. The blue-white sun of this solar system was far away, now, and very faint. But even with the naked eye, from a port on the little sports cruiser, one could see half a dozen huge and irregularly-shaped masses within a matter of miles. This was the thickest part of the meteor-stream. This was, perhaps, the remnant of what had been the nucleus of a comet. Some of these great stones were half a mile by three-quarters. One needlelike mass was at least a mile and a half in length, but nowhere more than four hundred yards through.
Ben surveyed his surroundings carefully. A tiny electron telescope amplified even starlight upon cold stone to any desired degree. The CC phone muttered and muttered and muttered. Someone, somewhere, had fired a positron beam. A Space-Navy receiver had picked up the radiation involvedЧand positron-beam bursts do not occur in nature. Naval craft were concentrating to hunt for the source of the blast. It had been, of course, the shot Ben had fired at the Thing on the doorsill, and the coordinates on it were not as close as they might have been, because nobody had expected a fugitive to be so foolish. Even so, however, the hunt would have been much more deadly if spacemen had been conducting it, instead
of being completely fettered by pompous orders issued by one brass hat, altered by another, and changed by a third in strict order of seniority.
Ben turned on a low trace of his space drive. Its force could almost have been measured in dynes, rather than in the milposЧmillions of foot-poundsЧcommonly spoken of in engine rooms. The little spaceship swam slowly among the crowded bits of cometary debris. It came to rest close beside the flank of the largest of all the masses of matter in sight. He maneuvered until no more than fifty feet separated the small vessel from the great mass of metal and rock. There would be mutual gravitation between them, of course. They would tend to fall together. But the acceleration of that gravity was so slight that it might take a month or more for the sports cruiser to fall just fifty feet.
For two days, now, Sally had remained on the insulated bunk, except when she donned an insulated spacesuit with the helmet left off, to move about the little ship. The Thing could not reach her. She was recovering from the terrific ordeal she had enduredЧand now Ben swore at himself for what he considered stupidity. Instead of allowing the Thing - itself to build up a positive potential, he could have made one artificially. If by any chance the Thing found a way to return to Sally, he felt confident that he could drive it Out again, now, in minutes rather than days.
He knew that the Thing still existed. The Geiger counter revealed its presence from time to time. Sally had seen it, glowing balefully in the darkness of the stateroom, when she woke after infinitely restful sleep.
The little sports cruiser lay close beside a monstrous and misshapen hunk of stone and metal. It went drifting Out and out from the bluewhite sun. Destroyers and cruisers and even battleships hunted for it, bedeviled by authoritative brass hats in swivel chairs. The CC phone muttered and muttered. Without detector-screens, which were useless anyhow because of the meteor-stream all about, Ben could not even estimate the nearness of his pursuers, but he felt safe. They could not ex amine every one of the countless millions of objects in a cometary orbit. Not possibly.