Wonder Stories Super Pack. Fletcher PrattЧитать онлайн книгу.
href="#litres_trial_promo">Chapter III: In Confinement
Chapter III: A Sudden Encounter
The Positronic Super Pack eBook Series
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(PSP #1) Fantasy Super Pack #1: ISBN 978-1-63384-282-3
(PSP #2) Fantasy Super Pack #2: 978-1-51540-655-6
(PSP #3) Conan the Barbarian Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-63384-292-2
(PSP #4) Science Fiction Super Pack #1: ISBN 978-1-63384-240-3
(PSP #5) Science Fiction Super Pack #2: ISBN 978-1-51540-477-4
(PSP #6) Lord Dunsany Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-63384-725-5
(PSP #7) Philip K. Dick Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-63384-799-6
(PSP #8) The Pirate Super Pack # 1: ISBN 978-1-51540-193-3
(PSP #9) The Pirate Super Pack # 2: ISBN 978-1-51540-196-4
(PSP #10) Harry Harrison Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-217-6
(PSP #11) Andre Norton Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-262-6
(PSP #12) Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-287-9
(PSP #13) Frederik Pohl Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-289-3
(PSP #14) King Arthur Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-306-7
(PSP #15) Science Fiction Novel Super Pack #1: ISBN: 978-1-51540-363-0
(PSP #16) Alan E. Nourse Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-393-7
(PSP #17) Space Science Fiction Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-440-8
(PSP #18) Wonder Stories Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-51540-454-5
(PSP #19) Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1: ISBN 978-1-51540-524-5
(PSP #20) Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2: ISBN 978-1-5154-0577-1
(PSP #21) Weird Tales Super Pack #1: ISBN: 978-1-5154-0548-1
(PSP #22) Weird Tales Super Pack #2: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-107-9
(PSP #23) Poul Anderson Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-51540-609-9
(PSP #24) Fantastic Universe Super Pack #1: ISBN: 978-1-5154-0-981-6
(PSP #25) Fantastic Universe Super Pack #2: ISBN: 978-1-5154-0-654-9
(PSP #26) Fantastic Universe Super Pack #3: ISBN: 978-1-5154-0-655-6
(PSP #27) Imagination Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-089-8
(PSP #28) Planet Stories Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-125-3
(PSP #29) Worlds of If Super Pack #1: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-148-2
(PSP #30) Worlds of If Super Pack #2: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-182-6
(PSP #31) Worlds of If Super Pack #3: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-234-2
(PSP #32) The Dragon Super Pack: 978-1-5154-1-124-6
(PSP #33) Fritz Leiber Super Pack #1: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-847-4
(PSP #34) Wizard of Oz Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-1-872-6
(PSP #35) The Vampire Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-3-954-7
(PSP #36) The Doctor Dolittle Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4-296-7
(PSP #37) Charles Boardman Hawes Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4-384-1
(PSP #38) The Edgar Wallace Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4-387-2
(PSP #39) Inspector Gabriel Hanaud Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4-385-8
(PSP #40) Tarzan Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4497-8
(PSP #41) Algis Budry Super Pack: ISBN: 978-1-5154-4496-1
(PSP #42) Max Brand Western Super Pack: ISBN 978-1-63384-841-2
Onslaught from Rigel
by Fletcher Pratt
Murray Lee woke abruptly, with the memory of the sound that had roused him drumming at the back of his head, though his conscious mind had been beyond its ambit. His first sensation was an overpowering stiffness in every muscle—a feeling as though he had been pounded all over, though his memory supplied no clue to the reason for such a sensation.
Painfully, he turned over in bed and felt the left elbow where the ache seemed to center. He received the most tremendous shock of his life. The motion was attended by a creaking clang and the elbow felt exceedingly like a complex wheel.
He sat up to make sure he was awake, tossing the offending arm free of the covers. The motion produced another clang and the arm revealed itself to his astonished gaze as a system of metal bands, bound at the elbow by the mechanism he had felt before, and crowned, where the fingers should be, by steely talons terminating in rubber-like finger-tips. Yet there seemed to be no lack of feeling in the member. For a few seconds he stared, open-mouthed, then lifted the other arm. It was the right-hand counterpart of the device he had been gazing at. He essayed to move one, then the other—the shining fingers obeyed his thought as though they were flesh and blood.
A sense of expectant fear gripped him as he lifted one of the hands to unbutton his pajamas. He was not deceived in the half-formed expectation; where the ribs clothed in a respectable amount of muscle should have been, a row of glistening metal plates appeared. Thoughts of body-snatching and bizarre surgery flitted through his mind to be instantly dismissed. Dreaming? Drunk? A dreadful idea that he might be insane struck him and he leaped from the bed to confront a mirror. His feet struck the floor with a portentous bang and each step produced a squeak and clank—and he faced the mirror, the familiar mirror before which he had shaved for years. With utter stupefaction he saw an iron countenance, above which a stiff brush of wire hair projected ludicrously.
One does not go mad at such moments. The shock takes time to sink in. “At all events I may as well get dressed,” he remarked to himself practically. “I don’t suppose water will do this hardware any good, so I’ll omit the bath; but if I’m crazy I might as