"Jack Williamson - The Pygmy Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

earth.
"Nonsense!" he muttered. "It's impossible!"
Aroused by the seeming wonder of it, he was drawn nearer the ball. It spun rather slowly, Larry
noted, and each rotation consumed several seconds. He could distinguish green patches that might be
forests, and thin, silvery lines that looked like rivers, and broad, red-brown areas that must be deserts,
and the broad blue stretches that suggested oceans.
"A toy world!" he cried. "A laboratory planet! What an experimentтАФ"
Then his eyes, looking up, caught the glistening, polished lens of a powerful magnifying glass which
hung by a black ribbon from a hook on one of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of
silently whirring apparatus.

EAGERLY, he unfastened the magnifier. Holding it before his eyes, he bent toward the strange
sphere spinning steadily in the air.
"Suffering shades of Caesar!" he ejaculated.
Beneath the lens a world was racing. He could see masses of vividly green forest; vast expanses of
bare, cracked, ocherous desert; wastes of smooth blue ocean.
Then he was gazing atтАФa city? Larry could not be sure that he had seen correctly. It had slipped
very swiftly beneath his lens. But he had a momentary impression of tiny, fantastic buildings, clustered in
an elflike city.
A pygmy planet, spinning in the laboratory like a world in the gulf of space! What could it mean?
Could it be connected with the strange call from Agnes, with the blood on the floor, with the strange and
ominous silence that shrouded the deserted room?
"Oh, Larry!" a clear, familiar voice rang suddenly from the door. "You came!"
Startled, Larry leaped back from the tiny, whirling globe and turned to the door. A girl had come
silently into the room. It was Agnes Sterling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, and
her brown eyes were wide with fear! In a white hand, which shook a little, she carried a small,
gold-plated automatic pistol.
She ran nervously across the wide floor to Larry, with relief dawning in her eyes.
"I'm so glad you came!" she gasped, panting with excitement. "I started to call you on the phone, but
then I was afraid it would kill you if you came! Please be careful! It may come back, any minute! You'd
better go away! It just took Dr. Whiting!"
"Wait a minute," Larry put in. "Just one thing at a time. Let's get this straight. To begin with, what is it
that might kill me, and that got the doctor?"
"It's terrible !" she gasped, trembling. "A monster! You must go away before it comes back!"

LARRY drew a tall stool from beside one of the crowded tables and placed it beside her. "Don't get
excited," he urged. "I'm sure everything will be all right. Just sit down, and tell me about it. The whole
story. Just what is going on here, and what happened to Dr. Whiting."
He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at him gratefully, and began to speak in a rapid voice.
"You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carried the doctor back there. And I
know it will soon be back for another victimтАФfor sacrifice!"
She had pointed across the great room, toward the strange little globe which hung between the pillars
of red and violet light.
"Please go slow!" Larry broke in. "You're too fast for me. Are you trying to tell me that that spinning
ball is really a planet?"
Agnes seemed a little more composed, though she was still flushed and breathing rapidly. Her small
hand still gripped the bright automatic.
"Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He said it was the great experiment of
the century. You see, he was testing evolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched it
until it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and development of life upon it. And the