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

two tones higher, held a hysterical note. "I've thought it! I've thought it, I tell you!" His legs bent
at the knees. "I'm done for!" He slumped to the pavement.

Hastily, the startled Leacock stooped over him, tore open his shirt, slid a hand down his chest. No
beat was discernable. The once wildly beating heart had packed up -for keeps. Sheridan was
dead. Heart disease, apparently.

At the same hour of the same day, Doctor Hans Luther did a very similar thing. Carrying his
deceptively plump body at top speed across his laboratory, he raced headlong down the stairs,
across the hall. He fled with many fearful glances over one shoulder, and the glances came from
eyes like polished agate.

Reaching the telephone, he dialled with shaking finger, got the Dortmund Zeitung, shouted for
the editor. With his eyes still upon the stairs while the telephone receiver trembled against his ear,
he bawled into the mouthpiece, "Vogel, I have for you the most astonishing news since the dawn
of time. You must give it space, plenty of space, quickly-before it is too late."

"Let me have the details," suggested Vogel, tolerantly.

"Earth is belted with a warning streamer that says: KEEP OFF THE GRASS!" Luther watched
the stairs and sweated.

"Ha-ha!" responded Vogel, without mirth. His heavy face moved in the tiny vision-screen above
the telephone, bore the patient expression of one accustomed to the eccentricities of scientists.

"Listen!" yelled Luther. He wiped his forehead with the back of a quivering hand. "You know
me. You know that I do not tell lies, I do not joke. I tell you nothing which I cannot prove. So I
tell you that now and perhaps for thousands of years past, this troubled world of ours ... a-ah! ...
a-a-ah!"

The receiver swung at the end of its cord, gave forth a reedy shout of, "Luther! Luther! What's
happened?"

Doctor Hans Luther made no response. Sinking slowly to his knees, he rolled his peculiarly
glistening eyes upward, fell on his side. His tongue licked his lips sluggishly, very sluggishly,
once, twice. He died in awful silence.

Vogel's face bobbed in the vision-screen. The dangling receiver made agitated noises for ears
beyond hearing.

Bill Graham knew nothing about these earlier tragedies, but he knew about Mayo. He was right
on the spot when it happened.

He was strolling along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he cast a
casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, saw a human figure falling past the
twelfth floor.

Down came the body, twisting, whirling, spread-eagling, as horribly impotent as a tossed bundle
of rags. It smacked the pavement and bounced nine feet. The sound was halfway between a
squelch and a crunch. The concrete looked as if it had been slapped by a giant crimson sponge.