"A. E. Van Vogt - Asylum (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

For a time, the futility of argument held him silent, but, as the minutes dragged, that dreadful physical urgency once more tainted his thoughts, he said heavily:
"You realize of course that we've revealed our presence. We should have waited for the others to come. There's no doubt at all that our ship was spotted by the Galactic Observer in this system before we reached the outer planets. They'll have tracers on us wherever we go, and, no matter where we bury our machine, they'll know its exact location. It is impossible to hide the interstellar drive energies; and, since they wouldn't make the mistake of bringing such energies to a third-degree planet, we can't hope to locate them in that fashion.
"But we must expect an attack of some kind. I only hope one of the great Galactics doesn't take part in it."
"One of them!" Her whisper was a gasp, then she snapped irritably, "Don't try to scare me. You've told me time and again that -- "
"All right, all right!" He spoke grudgingly, wearily. "A million years have proven that they consider us beneath their personal attention. And" -- in spite of his appalling weakness, scorn came -- "let any of the kind of agents they have in these lower category planets try to stop us."
"Hush!" Her whisper was tense. "Footsteps! Quick, get to your feet!"
He was aware of the shadowed form of her rising; then her hands were tugging at him. Dizzily, he stood up.
"I don't think," he began wanly, "that I can -- "
"Jeel!" Her whisper beat at him; her hands shook him. "It's a man and a woman. They're 'life,' Jeel, 'life'!"
Life!
He straightened with a terrible effort. A spark of the unquenchable will to live that had brought him across the black miles and the blacker years, burst into flames inside him. Lightly, swiftly, he fell into step beside Merla, and strode beside her into the open. He saw the shapes of the man and the woman.
In the half-night under the trees of that street, the couple came toward them, drawing aside to let them pass; first the woman came, then the man -- and it was as simple as if all his strength had been there in his muscles.
He saw Merla launch herself at the man; and then he was grabbing the woman, his head bending instantly for that abnormal kiss. Afterward -- after they had taken the blood, too -- grimness came to the man, a hard fabric of thought and counterthought, that slowly formed into purpose; he said:
"We'll leave the bodies here."
Her startled whisper rose in objection, but he cut her short harshly: "Let me handle this. These dead bodies will draw to this city news gatherers, news reporters or whatever their breed are called on this planet; and we need such a person now. Somewhere in the reservoir of facts possessed by a person of this type must be clues, meaningless to him, but by which we can discover the secret base of the Galactic Observer in this system. We must find that base, discover its strength, and destroy it if necessary when the tribe comes."
His voice took on a steely note: "And now, we've got to explore this city, find a much frequented building, under which we can bury our ship, learn the language, replenish our own vital supplies -- and capture that reporter.
"After I'm through with him" -- his tone became silk smooth -- "he will undoubtedly provide you with that physical diversion which you apparently crave when you have been particularly chemical."
He laughed gently, as her fingers gripped his arm in the darkness, a convulsive gesture; her voice came: "Thank you, Jeel, you do understand, don't you?"



2

Behind Leigh, a door opened. Instantly the clatter of voices in the room faded to a murmur. He turned alertly, tossing his cigarette onto the marble floor, and stepping on it, all in one motion.
Overhead, the lights brightened to daylight intensity; and in that blaze he saw what the other eyes were already staring at: the two bodies, the man's and the woman's, as they were wheeled in.
The dead couple lay side by side on the flat, gleaming top of the carrier. Their bodies were rigid, their eyes closed; they looked as dead as they were, and not at all, Leigh thought, as if they were sleeping.
He caught himself making a mental note of that fact -- and felt abruptly shocked.
The first murders on the North American continent in twenty-seven years. And it was only another job. By Heaven, he was tougher than he'd ever believed.
He grew aware that the voices had stopped completely. The only sound was the hoarse breathing of the man nearest him -- and then the scrape of his own shoes as he went forward.
His movement acted like a signal on that tense group of men. There was a general pressing forward. Leigh had a moment of hard anxiety; and then his bigger, harder muscles brought him where he wanted to be, opposite the two heads.
He leaned forward in dark absorption. His fingers probed gingerly the neck of the woman, where the incisions showed. He did not look up at the attendant, as he said softly:
"This is where the blood was drained?"
"Yes."
Before he could speak again, another reporter interjected: "Any special comment from the police scientists? The murders are more than a day old now. There ought to be something new."
Leigh scarcely heard. The woman's body, electrically warmed for embalming, felt eerily lifelike to his touch. It was only after a long moment that he noticed her lips were badly, almost brutally bruised.
His gaze flicked to the man; and there were the same neck cuts, the same torn lips. He looked up, questions quivered on his tongue -- and remained unspoken as realization came that the calm-voiced attendant was still talking. The man was saying:
" -- normally, when the electric embalmers are applied, there is resistance from the static electricity of the body. Curiously, that resistance was not present in either body."
Somebody said: "Just what does that mean?"
"This static force is actually a form of life force, which usually trickles out of a corpse over a period of a month. We know of no way to hasten the process, but the bruises on the lips show distinct burns, which are suggestive."
There was a craning of necks, a crowding forward; and Leigh allowed himself to be pushed aside. He stopped attentively, as the attendant said: "Presumably, a pervert could have kissed with such violence."
"I thought," Leigh called distinctly, "there were no more perverts since Professor Ungarn persuaded the government to institute his brand of mechanical psychology in all schools, thus ending murder, theft, war and all unsocial perversions."
The attendant in his black frock coat hesitated; then: "A very bad one seems to have been missed."
He finished: "That's all, gentlemen. No clues, no promise of an early capture, and only this final fact: We've wirelessed Professor Ungarn and, by great good fortune, we caught him on his way to Earth from his meteorite retreat near Jupiter. He'll be landing shortly after dark, in a few hours now."
The lights dimmed. As Leigh stood frowning, watching the bodies being wheeled out, a phrase floated out of the gathering chorus of voices:
" -- The kiss of death -- "
"I tell you," another voice said, "the captain of this space liner swears it happened -- the spaceship came past him at a million miles an hour, and it was slowing down, get that, slowing down -- two days ago."
" -- The vampire case! That's what I'm going to call it -- "
That's what Leigh called it, too, as he talked briefly into his wrist communicator. He finished: "I'm going to supper now, Jim."
"O.K., Bill." The local editor's voice came metallically. "And say, I'm supposed to commend you. Nine thousand papers took the Planetarian Service on this story, as compared with about forty-seven hundred who bought from Universal, who got the second largest coverage.
"And I think you've got the right angle for today also. Husband and wife, ordinary young couple, taking an evening's walk. Some devil hauls up alongside them, drains their blood into a tank, their life energy onto a wire or something -- people will believe that, I guess. Anyway, you suggest it could happen to anybody; so be careful, folks. And you warn that, in these days of interplanetary speeds, he could be anywhere tonight for his next murder.