"William Morrison - Bad Medicine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

would get rid of their radioactive herb remedy in three days. From advance information they had secured,
they could reasonably count on a Saturnian patrol ship being back on the fourth day. That gave them a
whole day to spare. O'Hara grinned, and almost felt the untold wealth in his pocket.
The Mercurian minstrels wheezed to an end, and O'Hara stepped forward with his right hand raised
for attention.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he roared, "we offer you now an attraction so sensational, so unbelievable,
that you, will think your eyes and ears are playing you false. Nothing like it has been seen or heard of on
Saturn from the beginning of time. Nothing like it has been seen or heard of on any of the planets. Ladies
and gentlemen, we offer Waloo, the Saturnian with the intelligence of an Earthman!"
Waloo stepped forward, grinning with pride. He seemed like an average Saturnian, and he was
exactly that. They had picked Waloo up stranded on Mercury, and he had shown no wisdom there. But
now he was wearing a pair of huge spectacles whose rims were caught around his flapping ears. And to
the other Saturnians he must have looked as wise as a judge.
"Waloo," said O'Hara gravely, "how much is two plus two?"

WALOO hesitated. "Four," he ventured after a while.
The crowd began to whisper excitedly. Evidently they were checking up. After a few seconds,
however, most of them were convinced that Waloo's answer was correct, and they stared at him
admiringly.
"How much is four times six?" O'Hara asked.
"Twenty-four," Waloo guessed. "How much is ninety-nine divided by three?"
"Seventeen," replied Waloo, grinning stupidly, and O'Hara smothered an oath and swept on to the
next question before the Saturnians could make up their minds whether or not he had made a mistake.
For a time Waloo answered correctly. And then O'Hara played his trump card.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "You have all heard of the Einstein theory. It is so difficult to
understand that few people, even on Earth, know what it is. But Waloo knows! Waloo, explain the
Einstein theory."
Waloo began slowly.
"In ordinary mechanics," he intoned, "if a body moves with the velocity `u' with reference to '0,' and
`0' itself moves with velocity 'v' with reference to '0'тАФ"
They were stricken with awe. They hadn't the slightest suspicion of what it all meant, of course. For
that matter, neither had Trenholm and O'Hara. Trenholm had simply taken the words from a
long-outmoded textbook on physics, and copied them for Waloo's benefit on a small placard.
The placard was hung on the wall of the space ship, where to the near sighted Saturnians it was
practically invisible. But Waloo, with his spectacles, could read the words with ease, just as he had read
the answers to the questions O'Hara had asked him. They were spelled in the new interplanetary
phonetic manner, and even a Saturnian could pronounce them, no matter how ignorant he might be of
their meaning. The whole difficulty with Waloo had been in teaching him to reply to the questions in
order, and not to skip on to the next question's answer before the previous one had been given, as he
repeatedly did.
Waloo came to the end of the Einstein theory, and there was a burst of spontaneous applause.
Waloo flushed happily.
"The damn fool must really think he knows what he's talking about," O'Hara thought, and then
addressed the crowd again.
"My friends, you have seen and heard this remarkable exhibition. Would you ever have expected
such intelligence from a Saturnian? Would you not have called it impossible? Well you, too, can be as
intelligent as Waloo. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, incredible as it may seem, we can increase your
intelligence a thousandfold! Just drink one bottle of genuine Red Man's Old-Fashioned Radioactive Herb
Remedy with vitamins A to R every day for five days, and you will be able to answer all the questions
Waloo has answered.