"Eric Frank Russel - Sinister Barrier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

is a multiple collaboration with a number of people who were brought to bear upon me in the
strangest way, almost as if some outside influence had decided ... but that is yet another yarn: To
all those folk I acknowledge my indebtedness, and especially to the following:-

To Charles Fort, author of The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo! and Wild Talents, for
providing the germ of the plot.

To the Fortean Society of New York, and to its redoubtable secretary Tiffany Thayer, for
providing evidence of universal cowhood.

To John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science-Fiction and Unknown Worlds, for
kicking me around until this story bore more resemblance to a story.

To H. W. Ralston, Esq., of Street & Smith Publishing Co. of New York, for releasing clothbound
book rights and thus enabling the yarn to reappear in its present form.

To Julius Schwartz, editor of Superman, for providing the press clipping shown on a following
page, and with it the spark-plug which got me going.

To Lloyd Arthur Eshbach and associates, of Fantasy Press, for encouraging my obsessions.

To thousands of science-fiction fans for being willing to enter the gates of hell-providing that
they get in on the ground floor-and thus being willing to read this yarn.

Eric Frank Russell
Liverpool, England, January, 1948
Clipping from a New York daily:-

TO BE READ IN A DIM LIGHT, AT NIGHT.

The late Charles Fort, who was a sort of Peter Pan of science and went about picking up
whimsies of fact, mostly from the rubbish heaps of astronomy, would have been interested in an
incident that occurred Sunday morning on Fifth Avenue between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth
Streets. Eight starlings in flight suddenly plummeted to the feet of Patrolman Anton Vodrazka,
dead. There was no sign of a wound or any other indication of what caused their end. It was at
first thought that they might have been poisoned, as were some pigeons at Verdi Square, Seventy-
second Street and Broadway, recently.

S.P.C.A. agents said it was most unlikely that eight birds, even if they had been poisoned, would
succumb at the same moment in mid-flight. Another report from the same neighborhood a few
minutes later didn't help any. A starling, "excited and acting as if pursued by some invisible
terror," had flown into a Childs Restaurant on Fifth Avenue, banged into the lights and fallen in
the front window.

What killed the eight starlings? What frightened the ninth? Was there some Presence in the sky?
... We hasten to pass the idea on to the nearest writer of mystery stories.
 Chapter 1
"SWIFT death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," mused Professor Peder
Bjornsen. It was a new slant, and a wicked one, born of dreadful facts. He passed long, slender
fingers through prematurely white hair. His eyes, strangely protruding, filled with uncanny light,