"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Adaptive Ultimate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

normal?"

Scott suppressed a pang of fear. "But why? She can't do any harm as long as we guard her here. Why
do we have to gamble with her life like that?"

Bach laughed shortly. "For the first time in my life I'm glad I'm an old man," he said. "Don't you see we
have to do something? She's a menace. She's dangerous. Heaven only knows how dangerous. We'll
have to try."

Scott groaned and assented. An hour later, under the pretext of experiment, he watched the old man
inject five grains of morphia into the girl's arm, watched her frown and blinkтАФand adjust. The drug was
powerless.

It was at night that Bach got his next idea. "Ethyl chloride!" he whispered. "The instantaneous anaesthetic.
Perhaps she can't adjust to lack of oxygen. We'll try."

Kyra was asleep. Silently, carefully, the two crept in, and Scott stared down in utter fascination at the
weird beauty of her features, paler than ever in the faint light of midnight. Carefully, so carefully, Bach
held the cone above her sleeping face, drop by drop he poured the volatile, sweet-scented liquid into it.
Minutes passed.

"That should anaesthetize an elephant," he whispered at last, and jammed the cone full upon her face.

She awoke. Fingers like slim steel rods closed on his wrist, forcing his hand away. Scott seized the cone,
and her hand clutched his wrist as well, and he felt the strength of her grasp.

"Stupid," she said quietly, sitting erect. "This is quite uselessтАФlook!"

She snatched a paper knife from the table beside the bed. She bared her pale throat to the moonlight,
and then, suddenly, drove the knife to its hilt into her bosom!

Scott gulped in horror as she withdrew it. A single spot of blood showed on her flesh, she wiped it away,
and displayed her skin, pale, unscarred, beautiful.

"Go away," she said softly, and they departed.

The next day she made no reference to the incident. Scott and Bach spent a worried morning in the
laboratory, doing no work, but simply talking. It was a mistake, for when they returned to the library, she
was gone, having, according to Mrs. Getz, simply strolled out of the door and away. A hectic and hasty
search of the adjacent blocks brought no sign of her.

At dusk she was back, pausing hatless in the doorway to permit Scott, who was there alone, to watch
the miraculous change as she passed from sunset to chamber, and her hair faded from mahogany to
aluminum.

"Hello," she said smiling. "I killed a child."

"What? My Lord, Kyra!"

"It was an accident. Surely you don't feel that I should be punished for an accident, Dan, do you?"