"A. E. Van Vogt - The Rat & the Snake & Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

1. The Rat and the Snake
2. Ersatz Eternal
3. The Cataaaa
4. Resurrection
5. The Barbarian




A.E. Van Vogt

THE RAT AND THE SNAKE

Mark Gray's main pleasure in life was feeding rats to his pet python.
He kept the python in a blocked-off room in the old house in which he
lived alone. Each mealtime, he would put the rat in a narrow tunnel he had
rigged, At the end of the tunel was an opening. The rat, going thiough the
narrow space into the bright room beyond, automatically spring-locked a
gate across the opening.
It would then find itself in the room with the python, with no way of
escape.
Mark liked to listen to its squeaks as it became aware of its danger,
and then he would hear its mad scurring to escape the irresistible enemy.
Sometimes he watched the exciting scene thiough a plate-glass window, but
he actually preferred the sound to the fight, conjuring his own delectable
mental pictues, always from the viewpoint of the python.
During World War Ill, the O.P.A. forgot to put a ceiling price on
rats. The catching of rats got no special priority. Rat catchers were
drafted into the armed forces as readily as the other people. The supply
of rats grew less. Mark was soon reduced to catching his own rats; but he
had to work for a living in the ever-leaner times of war, so that there
were periods of time when the python was fed infrequently.
Then one day Mark, ever searching, glimpsed some white rats through a
window of an old commercial-style building.
He peered in eagerly, and though the room was dimly lighted with
wartime regulation bulbs, he was able to make out that it was a large room
with hnndreds of cages in it and that each of the cages contained rais.
He made it to the front of the building at a dead run. In pausing to
catch his breath, he noticed the words on the doors CARRON LABORATORIES,
Research.
He found himself presently in a dim hallway of a business office.
Because everybody was clearly working twice as hard because of the war, it
took a little while to attract the attention of one of the women
employees; and there were other delays such as just sitting and waiting
while it seemed as if he was the forgotten man. But after all those
minutes he was finally led into the office of a small, tight-faced man,
who was introduced as Erie Plode and who listened to his request and the
reason for it.
When Mark described his poor, starvng python, the small man laughed a
sudden, explosive laughter, But his eyes remained cold. Moments later he