Читать книгу The Science Fiction Anthology онлайн
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It was a subject of wonder and much speculation, but no one took serious notice of them until one night a federal Agent arrested one man for indecency. It was a valid charge. One disadvantage of this method of travel was that, while a body could travel instantaneously to any chosen spot, it arrived without clothes.
The arrested man disappeared from his jail cell, and the next morning the Agent was found strangled to death in his bed. This set off a campaign against Konvs. One base act led to another, until the original reason for noticing them at all was lost. Normal men no longer thought of them as human.
Mrs. Jamieson told how Stinson, knowing he had made too many cylinders and given them unwisely, left Earth for Alpha Centaurus.
He went alone, not knowing if he could go so far, or what he would find when he arrived. But he did arrive, and it was what he had sought.
He returned for the others. They gathered one night in a dirty, broken-down farmhouse in Missouri—and disappeared in a body, leaving the Agents standing helplessly on Earth, shaking their fists at the sky.