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

from a stunning blow. Even to him, who knew the scene, there
came a constriction, a sense of unthinkable vastness. It was a
video view of a section of the milky way. Four hundred mil-
lion stars as seen through telescopes that could pick up the
light of a red dwarf at thirty thousand light-years.
The video plate was twenty-five yards in diametera scene
that had no parallel elsewhere in the plenum. Other galaxies
simply did not have that many stars.
Only one in two hundred thousand of those gloving suns
had planets.
That was the colossal fact that compelled them now to an
irrevocable act. Wearily, Enash looked around him.
"The monster has been very clever," he said quietly. "If we
go ahead, he goes with us, obtains a reconstructor, and re-
' turns by his method to his planet. If we use the directional
beam, he flashes along it, obtains a reconstructor, and again
reaches his planet first. In either event, by the time our fleets
arrived back here, he would have revived enough of his kind
to thwart any attack we could mount."
He shook his torso. The picture was accurate, he felt sure,
but it still seemed incomplete. He said slowly, "We have one
advantage now. Whatever decision we make, there is no lan-
guage machine to enable him to learn what is it. We can carry
out our plans without his knowing what they will be. He knows
that neither he nor we can blow up the ship. That leaves
us one real alternative."
It was Captain Gorsid who broke the silence that followed.
"Well, gentlemen, I see we know our minds. We will set the
engines, blow up the controls, and take him with us."
They looked at each other, race pride in their eyes. Enash
touched suckers with each in turn.
An hour later, when the heat was already considerable,
Enash had the thought that sent him staggering to the com-
municator, to call Shuri, the astronomer. "Shun," he yelled,
"when the monster first awakenedremember Captain Gorsid
had difficulty getting your subordinates to destroy the locators.
We never thought to ask them what the delay was. Ask them
... ask them"
There was a pause, then Shuri's voice came weakly over
the roar of the static. "They. . . couldn't. . . get. . . into the...
room. The door was locked."
Enash sagged to the floor. They had missed more than one
point, he realized. The man had awakened, realized the situa-
tion; and, when he vanished, he had gone to the ship, and
there discovered the secret of the locator and possibly the secret
of the reconstructorif he didn't know it previously. By the
time he reappeared, he already had from them what he
wanted. All the rest must have been designed to lead them
to this act of desperation.
In a few moments, now, he would be leaving the ship,