"Emil Petaja - The Time Twister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

The Time Twister
By Emil Petaja
Scanned by BW-SciFi
Proofed by mabee
Ebook version 1.0
Release Date: July, 12 th, 2003
Published by
DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
750 Third Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10017
Copyright ┬й 1968 by Emil Petaja
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or
by any means without the prior written
permission of the Publisher, excepting
brief quotes used in connection with
reviews written specifically for inclusion
in a magazine or newspaper.
Dell ┬о TM 681510 , Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
Manufactured in The United States of America
First printingтАФSeptember 1968
 CHAPTER ONE
Art Mackey's cliffhanger tape was a long time reaching Steve. Lord knows where and how Art had
ever mailed it, up in that godforsaken wilderness!
Steve's injuries had shunted him from hospital to hospital, even over to the Berkeley research complex
for tests, right back where he started from, his home base for years of philosophical-anthropology studies. It
was the chunk of shrapnel in his frontal cerebrum. That happy little souvenir of South Asia. Part of it had
wormed back in. By the time they had found it, half his cranium had been replaced in silver, with weird new
bionics crystal cells, lab-grown just for him, hemstitched in for good measure. A cause c├йl├иbre in
brain-surgery annals, but all Dr. Stephen H. McCord wanted now was out.
He glanced out of his window over the Presidio and the Golden Gate, whistled, and went back to his
packing. Gad, what a mess he had accumulated in his eight months of hospital hopping! He wasn't sure
what came next, but for the momentтАФjust for the momentтАФall he asked was out. Out! Anywhere! He
gulped back the frightening prospect of having to think out each day's problems after all the spoon-feeding,
and with that new silver-plated brain of his!
Grabbing up his shaving gear in the bathroom, he glanced at his face in the mirror. He winced at how
lean it was, and sallow, in spite of his stints with the sun-lamp. Street clothes sagged on his thin, bony
frame. Something of the amiable earnestness that had once crinkled his green-brown eyes so handily was
missing; the dark pleasant hairline had receded an inch. There were new, craggy lines. Not quite bitter but
not quite eager for life, either. His easily smiling mouth had thinned, picked up a cynical tic. When his
excited hands dropped a hairbrush on the floor, he looked down at them. They shook, damn them! The
medics said the trembling would go after awhile. It was a neural reaction to morbid dwelling on his body,
the fear his brain wouldn't ever be as whip-sharp as it had been before.
"You'll be as good as new, Doctor McCord," they said. "Better. That silver plate and the crystal cells
will outlast the rest of you."
"Protect me from werewolves, too."
"Luckily, none of the motor areas is affected," they said.
"Jolly."
Steve picked up the brush and ran it along the shaggy sides of his black Irish hair. Carefully. All the
hirsute growth on top was phoney. What was it the TV comedians called them? Rugs? "Hey, that's a new