"Stepping Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

end, regardless, in order to collect the other five.
At about the time all the seats were filled he discovered that he really was
going to stay on, regardless. Because as soon as the Stadium was full the gates
were closed; and Chesley could see that they were being locked, and that guards
were standing firmly in front of them, turning people away.
There wasn't any way out.
And then the field lights flickered and spots came on, beaming down at the
platform. And a man appeared.
He appeared. He didn't walk quickly up the stairs, or come out from behind a
curtain. He appeared. The only part of that statement that is questionable is
that he was "a man." Chesley thought that, taking everything into account, he
looked like a man.
But he was ten feet tall; and he had a halo that glowed all around him.
He said good evening, and his voice was heard all over the park. Maybe it was
the microphones, but Chesley didn't think the sound came from the microphones;
it seemed to come from the speaker himself; and the voice was odd. Not metallic.
Not foreign. Not any of the words that people use to describe the voices of
people. It sounded non-peoplish; it sounded strange.
Out of the corner of his eye Chesley saw commotion, and realized that some
people were fainting. But not him. He did choke a little on the last of his ice
cream cone, but he managed to get it down. Still and all, he did have a sick
feeling in his stomach. It wasn't from the hot dogs.
The man said: "I am not a man."
A muffled moan from eighty thousand voices. Chesley only nodded.
"I take the form of a man in order to permit you to see me," boomed the voice.
"I am your Viceroy."
A couple of hundred people, near the exits, had had all they could take. No mere
five dollars was enough to make them stay. But the Viceroy was. The desperate
ones jumped up from their seats, ran shouting toward the guards; and maybe the
guards couldn't have stopped them, but the Viceroy could; he pointed his finger.
They stopped. In fact, they were frozen. Most of them toppled over, rigid.
Arthur Chesley thought that this was very interesting.
Living with his wife had done things to his temperament; he was so unused to
strong emotion that he didn't recognize it when it came. He was scared to death.
His heart was beating wildly; he had violent cramps in his stomach. But since he
had never been terribly afraid before, he didn't realize it.
He even tried to order a bottle of soda pop. But apparently the vendor knew more
about his emotions than Chesley did; because he had disappeared.
The Viceroy went on: "I have been sent by my people to prepare this planet for
their habitation."
Moans again, and another nod from Chesley. That figured, he thought; it would
have to be something like that. He began to shake, and wondered why.
"I have been sent alone," boomed the voice, "because I need no aid. I myself can
cope with any force your puny Earth can send against me. Singlehanded I can
destroy every Army."
The audience had stopped moaning; it was stunned, or most of it was. Then the
first shock began to wear off and Chesley began to hear voices. "Fake!" cried
someone, and "Who're you kidding?" screamed someone else. And there were uglier
noises than that, too.
"I can do some things that you do not even suspect!" cried the Viceroy in a