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

stared out of his office window which gaped on the third level above traffic swirling through
Stockholm's busy Hotorget. But those eyes were not looking at the traffic.

"And there's a swat waiting for the first bee that blats about pilfered honey." he added. Stockholm
hummed and roared, a city unconscious of its chains. The professor continued to stare in silent,
fearful contemplation. Then suddenly his eyes lifted, widened, flared with apprehension. He drew
away from the window, slowly, reluctantly; moving as if forcing himself by sheer will-power to
retreat from a horror which beckoned, invisibly beckoned.

Raising his hands, he pushed, pushed futilely at thin air. Those distorted optics of his, still
preternaturally cold and hard, yet brilliant with something far beyond fear, followed with dreadful
fascination a shapeless, colorless point that crept from window to ceiling. Turning with a
tremendous effort, he ran, his mouth open and expelling breath soundlessly.

Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. His stricken hand clutched the
calendar from his desk, dragged it down to the carpet. He sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, lay
still. The spark which had motivated him became extinguished. The calendar's top leaf fluttered
in a queer, inexplicable breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015.

Bjornsen had been five hours dead when the police got to him. Imperturbably, the medical
examiner diagnosed heart disease and left it at that. Snooping restlessly around, Police Lieutenant
Baeker found on the professor's desk a note bearing a message from the grave.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is humanly impossible to discipline my thoughts
every minute of the day, to control my involuntary dreams every hour of the night. It is inevitable
that soon I shall be found dead, in which case you must-"

"Must what?" asked Baeker. There was no reply. The voice that could have shocked him with its
answer was stilled forever. Baeker heard the medical examiner's report, then burned the note. The
professor, he decided, like others of his ilk, had grown eccentric in his old age, being burdened
by too much abstruse learning. Heart disease it was, actually and officially.

On May the thirtieth, Doctor Guthrie Sheridan walked with the deliberate, jerky step of an
automaton along Charing Cross Road, London. His eyes were shining, frozen lumps, and he kept
them focussed on the sky while his legs made their mechanical way. He had the eerie appearance
of a blind man following a thoroughly familiar route.

Jim Leacock saw him wending his fascinated way, failed to notice anything abnormal. Dashing
up, he yelled, "Hey, Sherry!" all set to administer a hearty slap on the back. He stopped, appalled.

Turning upon him pale, strained features framing eyes that gleamed like icicles seen in bluish
twilight, Guthrie seized an arm and chattered, "Jim! By heavens, I'm glad to see you!" His breath
was fast, his voice urgent. "Jim, I've got to talk to someone-or go crazy. I've just discovered the
most incredible fact in the history of mankind. It is almost beyond belief. Yet it explains a
thousand things that we've merely guessed at or completely ignored."

"What is it?" demanded Leacock, skeptically. He studied the other's distorted face.

"Jim, let me tell you that man is not and never has been the master of his fate, nor the captain of
his soul. Why, the very beasts of the field-!" He broke off, grabbed at his listener. His voice went