"Eric Frank Russell - Mechanical Mice2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

incredulously at the little exit just used by the shuttle, then at the couple of other undamaged
but lifeless shuttles lying about the room.
"Bill," he mouthed, "your bee analogy was perfect. Don't you understand? There's another
swarm! A queen got loose!"
There was another swarm all right. For the next forty-eight hours it played merry hell. Burman
spent the whole time down at headquarters trying to convince them that his evidence wasn't
just a fantastic story, but what helped him to persuade the police of his veracity was the
equally fantastic reports that came rolling in.
To start with, old Gildersome heard a crash in his shop at midnight, thought of his valuable
stock of cameras and mini┬мature movie projectors, pulled on his pants and rushed
downstairs. A razor-sharp instrument stabbed him through the right instep when halfway
down, and he fell the rest of the way. He lay there, badly bruised and partly stunned, while
things clicked, ticked and whirred in the darkness and the gloom. One by one, all the
contents of his box of expensive lenses went through a hole in the door. A quantity of
projec┬мtor cogs and wheels went with them.
Ten people complained of being robbed in the night of watches and alarm clocks. Two were
hysterical. One swore that the bandit was "a six-inch cockroach" which purred like a toy
dynamo. Getting out of bed, he'd put his foot upon it and felt its cold hardness wriggle away
from beneath him. Filled with revulsion, he'd whipped his foot back into bed "just as another
cockroach scuttled toward him." Burman did not tell that agitated complainant how near he
had come to losing his foot.
Thirty more reports rolled in next day. A score of houses had been entered and four shops
robbed by things that had the agility and furtiveness of ratsтАФexcept that they emitted tiny
ticks and buzzing noises. One was seen racing along the road by a homing railway worker.
He tried to pick it up, lost his forefinger and thumb, stood nursing the stumps until an
ambulance rushed him away.
Rare metals and fine parts were the prey of these ticking marauders. I couldn't see how
Burman or anyone else could wipe them out once and for all, but he did it. He did it by
baiting them like rats. I went around with him, helping him on the job, while he consulted a
map.
"Every report," said Burman, "leads to this street. An alarm clock that suddenly sounded
was abandoned near here. Two automobiles were robbed of small parts near here. Shuttles
have been seen going to or from this area. Five cats were dealt with practically on this spot.
Every other incident has taken place within easy reach."
"Which means," I guessed, "that the queen is somewhere near this point?"
"Yes." He stared up and down the quiet empty street over which the crescent moon shed a
sickly light. It was two o'clock in the morning. "We'll settle this matter pretty soon!"
He attached the end of a reel of firm cotton to a small piece of silver chain, nailed the reel to
the wall, dropped the chain on the concrete. I did the same with the movement of a broken
watch. We distributed several small cogs, a few clock wheels, several camera fitments,
some small, tangled bunches of copper wire, and other attractive oddments.
Three hours later, we returned accompanied by the police. They had mallets and hammers
with them. All of us were wearing steel leg-and-foot shields knocked up at short notice by a
handy sheet-metal worker.
The bait had been taken! Several cotton strands had bro┬мken after being unreeled a short
distance, but others were intact. All of them either led to or pointed to a steel grating leading
to a cellar below an abandoned warehouse. Looking down, we could see a few telltale
strands running through the window frame beneath.
Burman said, "Now!" and we went in with a rush. Rusty locks snapped, rotten doors
collapsed, we poured through the warehouse and into the cellar.