"Eric Frank Russell - With a Strange Device" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

WITH A STRANGE DEVICE



He studied himself in the mirror while carefully knotting his tie.Lean, ascetic features, thin lips, dark eyes,
black eyebrows and hair.Small white scar on left temple.Clean-shaven,thirtyish , neat dresser. How long
before that description became circulated? How long before some collarless, cigarette-chewing write-up
man cashed in on him with a yarn sensationally titledThe Phantom Killer of Cooper's Creek or
something like that?
 It didn't look like the faceo( a killer.Too thoughtful and bookish. But it might well fill the part with eyes
straining at a police camera and with an identification number hung beneath. Anyone could look a suitable
candidate for the death-cell when photographed in those circumstances, especially when bleary-eyed and
frowsy after a long, long night of intensive questioning.



'Dinners ready!'



`Coming!' he called.



He didn't really want any dinner but would have to go through the motions of eating a hearty one. The
alarm permeating his mind was matched by a sickness in his stomach. But abstinence would invite more
awkward questions. He'd have to force the unwanted food down.



`The condemned man ate a large, four course meal.' Ridiculous! When facing his end, no men could do
that.



Chapter 1




The governmental research establishment, the very heart of the country's scientific effort, was huge and
formidable by any standard, even that of the technological twentieth century. By comparisonFortKnox
andAlcatraz , the Bastille and the Kremlin, were as frontier forts built with wood logs. Yet it was
vulnerable. Hostile eyes had examined what little could be seen of it, hostile minds had carefully
considered what little was known about it, after which the entire place became less safe than a
moth-eaten tent.



The outer wall was forty feet high above the earth, thirty feet deep below the earth, eight feet thick, of