"HalfWorldsMeet-HughRaymond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Raymond Hugh)

all over.
Randolph quickly unscrewed the top of the box and looked within. Suspended in
the center, directly between the two mirrors, an infinitely tiny, bisected ball
of pure light spun and hummed. He'd gotten more than his sunbeam. He'd gotten a
tiny half sun.
As he watched, the tiny dot began to grow. In half an hour it was double its
original size and getting bigger every minute.
Randolph, paralyzed, stared at the growing dot with undisguised terror. He
realized, with awful clarity, that he had stumbled upon something entirely new,
and that a whole set of laws governing its action and reaction was coming into
being. He fled to the house, frantically grabbed pencil and paper and busied
himself for an hour with calculations.
Martha came home from town as he rushed out wildly waving a sheaf of papers. He
was shouting incomprehensibly, something about the dot growing until it burned
the earth to a cinder. The calmed him down as only she knew how and presently he
light, why not bury the thing? It can't grow if it can't feed." Her voice was
calm, reassuring.
"The thing will grow on any sort of impact vibration whatsoever. These figures
prove it. What about cosmic rays? They penetrate many feet of lead. We'd go
bankrupt buying a box big enough to hold it."
She shook her head.
"You told me once that a certain amount of ground depth was the equivalent of
the quantity of lead necessary to stop the rays. Why don't you throw it down the
crack in the rock on the other side of the pasture?"
He looked at her wildly.
"Darling, of course !" he shouted and danced a jig.
She stood for this a while, then drew him away to the box. Peering over the
edge, she glimpsed the evilly glowing whirling dot and shuddered.
"The box is too heavy," she cried, "And that crevice is over half a mile away."
He considered a moment, then brought his fist down on the edge of the table on
which the machine rested.
"Martha, empty the fish-bowl and bring it back here, quick. Just the fish, not
the water!"

She left at high speed and returned in a few minutes. Seizing the huge object,
he turned it over, and with a hiss the ball of fire fell into the large bowl of
water. Without wasting an instant he cupped a hand over one end and dashed madly
for the other end of the field.
He returned in about an hour to find his wife screwing on the top of the box.
"Is it safe?" she asked anxiously, wiping a smear of grease from her hands.
He looked at her with a relieved expression on his face.
"Safe. Buried a thousand feet down."
They walked arm in arm toward the house.
OR A WHILE the box was forgotten, but little by little the desire to explore its
possibilities grew back in Randolph's mind. He spent long hours of the evenings
poring over calculations, working out its mathematics. Finally he decided to
have a go at it again. This time there would be no danger, he promised himself.
He went to see Saunders, the president of the town's small bank.
Saunders was sitting at his desk as he walked in. He blinked his small piggish
eyes rapidly and fiddled with the gold watch chain strung from the pockets of