"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Smothered Seas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

wonder!"
"You wonder what?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all!"
"Lister," said Cass pointedly, "you seem to be able to be very close-mouthed about some things, and
to some people. I wonder how you are with women."
"What do you mean?" asked Lister, with a guilty premonition.
"Well, for example, you didn't hap-pen to say anything to Miss Amber about the sailing of the fleet,
did you?"
Lister flushed. He hadn't, of course; and yet she might have gath-ered it from some of his remarks.
But then, what if she had?
"Of course not," he growled. "Speaking of the fleet," he added, "I'm going over to see Admiral Allen
right now."

ARRIVED at the admiral's quarters, Lister came directly to the point. "Sir," he said, "I've been
thinking about all these algae. At the rate they are in-creasing, you may find your whole fleet stalled in a
mass of jelly before you get to Behring Strait."
"I've thought of that," Admiral Allen replied soberly, and yet with a twinkle in his eyes which Lister
couldn't quite fathom.
"But have you heard the latest reports, sir?" Lister persisted. "The Chi-cago River is clogged. The
stuff is beginning to plug the water mains everywhere. I know it's becoming a nuisance here in San
Francisco. In Texas, the Spanish moss is beginning to collect in masses heavy enough to break tree
branches.
"All over the country railroad ties are turning into pulpy beds of assorted fungi, puffballs, and a
hundred other varieties. The resulting decay has even caused derailings. In the moister areas, trains
actually have to plow their way through vast accumulations of lichens, which have found the shaded cuts
and half-decayed ties an ideal environment in which to exercise their new vitality."
"It's even worse in Asia," the ad-miral replied. "They say that on the tundras the lichens are growing
into heaps like haystacks on the railroads, and that the algae have blocked rivers and caused floods.
That's why, even at the risk of getting our entire fleet stuck in the slime, we must attack the Khan while
this unexplainable growth of plants is endangering his source of supplies."
"I didn't know that," said Lister.
"Well, keep it under your hat, and don't breathe it to a soul. It is secret information that has just come
in from the intelligence service. Have you any idea as to the reason for all this? I was just going to send
for you, when you showed up."
"Something may have caused an ab-normal increase in the ozone of the outer layers of the
atmosphere, and this ozone may be filtering out those wave lengths of sunlight which ordinarily hold algae
in check."
But Admiral Allen was one of those practical men who have little patience with scientific explanations
of anything. So he suggested, "Might it not be some new device of Asiatic warfare?"
"I hardly think so, sir. The Khan wouldn't use this weapon which appears to be hurting him even
worse than it is us."

II.

THAT EVENING, when Dick Lis-ter and Sally Amber were seated in a restaurant, she again
broached the sub-ject of the algae.
"I hear it's even worse in Asia than in America," she said.
"How do you happen to know that?" he asked in surprise.
"It's so, then? Oh, everybody isn't so close-mouthed as you, Dick," she re-plied demurely. She
raised her lovely dark, innocent eyes.