"Philip Wylie - Gladiator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wylie Philip)

Danner's cranium was overlarge and his neck small; but he stiffened it to hold himself in a posture of dignity.
тАЬNever.тАЭ

His wife gazed from the defiant pose to the locked door visible through the parlor. She stirred angrily in her
clothes and speared a morsel of food. тАЬYou'll be punished for it.тАЭ

On Monday Danner hastened home from his classes. During the night he had had a new idea. And a new idea
was a rare thing after fourteen years of groping investigation. тАЬAlkaline radicals,тАЭ he murmured as he crossed
his lawn. He considered a group of ultraтИТmicroscopic bodies. He had no name for them. They were the
тАЬdeterminantsтАЭ of which he had talked. He locked the laboratory door behind himself and bent over the
microscope he had designed. тАЬHuh!тАЭ he said. An hour later, while he stirred a solution in a beaker, he said:
тАЬHuh!тАЭ again. He repeated it when his wife called him to dinner. The room was a maze of test tubes, bottles,

Chapter I 3
 Gladiator
burners, retorts, instruments. During the meal he did not speak. Afterwards he resumed work. At twelve he
prepared six tadpole eggs and put them to hatch. It would be his three hundred and sixtyтИТfirst separate tadpole
hatching.

Then, one day in June, Danner crossed the campus with unusual haste. Birds were singing, a gentle wind
eddied over the town from the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, flowers bloomed. The professor did not heed
the reтИТburgeoning of nature. A strange thing had happened to him that morning. He had peeped into his
workroom before leaving for the college and had come suddenly upon a phenomenon.

One of the tadpoles had hatched in its aquarium. He observed it eagerly, first because it embodied his new
idea, and second because it swam with a rare activity. As he looked, the tadpole rushed at the side of its
domicile. There was a tinkle and a splash. It had swum through the plate glass! For an instant it lay on the
floor. Then, with a flick of its tail, it flew into the air and hit the ceiling of the room.

тАЬGood Lord!тАЭ Danner said. Old years of work were at an end. New years of excitement lay ahead. He
snatched the creature and it wriggled from his grasp. He caught it again. His fist was not sufficiently strong to
hold it. He left it, flopping in eightтИТfoot leaps, and went to class with considerable suppressed agitation and
some reluctance. The determinant was known. He had made a living creature abnormally strong.

When he reached his house and unlocked the door of the laboratory, he found that four tadpoles, in all, had
hatched. Before they expired in the unfamiliar element of air, they had demolished a quantity of apparatus.

Mrs. Danner knocked on the door. тАЬWhat's been going on in there?тАЭ

тАЬNothing,тАЭ her husband answered.

тАЬNothing! It sounded like nothing! What have you got there? A cat?'

тАЬNoтАФyes.тАЭ

тАЬWellтАФI won't have such goings on, and that's all there is to it.тАЭ

Danner collected the debris. He buried the tadpoles. One was dissected first. Then he wrote for a long time in
his notebook. After that he went out and, with some difficulty, secured a pregnant cat. A week later he
chloroformed the tabby and inoculated her. Then he waited. He had been patient for a long time. It was