Sci-Fi Trilogy: Parasite Planet, The Lotus Eaters & The Planet of Doubt. Stanley G. Weinbaum

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СКАЧАТЬ Patricia. "Your mask, fool!" she rasped. "Close it!"

      "Mask? Why?" Nevertheless, he obeyed automatically.

      "Why? That's why! The digestive acids—look!"

      She pointed at the walls; indeed, thousands of tiny pinholes of light were appearing. The digestive acids of the monstrosity, powerful enough to attack whatever food chance brought, had corroded the metal; it was porous; the shack was ruined. He gasped as fuzzy molds shot instantly from the remains of his meal, and a red-and-green fur sprouted from the wood of chairs and table.

      The two faced each other.

      Ham chuckled. "Well," he said, "you're homeless, too. Mine went down in a mudspout."

      "Yours would!" Patricia retorted acidly. "You Yankees couldn't think of finding shallow soil, I suppose. Bed rock is just six feet below here, and my place is on pilons."

      "Well, you're a cool devil! Anyway, your place might as well be sunk. What are you going to do?"

      "Do? Don't concern yourself. I'm quite able to manage."

      "How?"

      "It's no affair of yours, but I have a rocket call each month."

      "You must be a millionaire, then," he commented.

      "The Royal Society," she said coldly, "is financing this expedition. The rocket is due——"

      She paused; Ham thought she paled a little behind her mask.

      "Due when?"

      "Why—it just came two days ago. I'd forgotten."

      "I see. And you think you'll just stick around for a month waiting for it. Is that it?"

      Patricia stared at him defiantly.

      "Do you know," he resumed, "what you'd be in a month? It's ten days to summer and look at your shack." He gestured at the walls, where brown and rusty patches were forming; at his motion a piece the size of a saucer tumbled in with a crackle. "In two days this thing will be a caved-in ruin. What'll you do during fifteen days of summer? What'll you do without shelter when the temperature reaches a hundred and fifty—a hundred and sixty? I'll tell you—you'll die."

      She said nothing.

      "You'll be a fuzzy mass of molds before the rocket returns," Ham said. "And then a pile of clean bones that will go down with the first mudspout."

      "Be still!" she blazed.

      "Silence won't help. Now I'll tell you what you can do. You can take your pack and your mudshoes and walk along with me. We can make the Cool Country before summer—if you can walk as well as you talk."

      "Go with a Yankee poacher? I fancy not!"

      "And then," he continued imperturbably, "we can cross comfortably to Erotia, a good American town."

      Patricia reached for her emergency pack, slung it over her shoulders. She retrieved a thick bundle of notes, written in aniline ink on transkin, brushed off a few vagrant molds, and slipped it into the pack. She picked up a pair of diminutive mudshoes and turned deliberately to the door.

      "So you're coming?" he chuckled.

      "I'm going," she retorted coldly, "to the good British town of Venoble. Alone!"

      "Venoble!" he gasped. "That's two hundred miles south! And across the Greater Eternities, too!"

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