"Blish, James - Pheonix Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

to the legend on the bow. "Ick-er-uss. That ain't no human name."
Marshall laughed. "That's the name of an old Greek, my friend--the first man to
ever fly."
"Wright was the first man to fly," snapped the belted man, but more doubtfully.
"Naw, he wasn't," another one of the group said. "The guy's right, boss. This
Greek and some wop named Davinky both flew before Wright. I read about it
somewhere. The Greek had wax wings."
"That's true," Marshall smiled, nodding at the man. "I'm glad somebody here
knows something."
The tense group seemed to relax a little.
"Well, mebbe so," the belted man said more graciously. "Let's hear the story,
bud."
Marshall explained quickly the circumstances which had sent him to Mars and kept
him there so long, taking the leader inside to show him the painfully-built gold
cage, two ornaments left over, and the magazines of exposed film. When he
finished there was awe on every face.
"So," said the leader, spitting reflectively. "Before all this happened--" he
gestured at the wilderness and the ragged scarecrows of his men--"it would have
been a great thing. Let's see: you left in forty-two, huh? You was lucky. You
missed the party." He frowned and plucked a long piece of grass from the turf.
"Well, startin' from the beginning--this all happened early in February of
forty-three. Invasion, from outside. We thought it was Martians, considering H.
G. Wells and all, but I guess if you say Mars is dead, why then they musta been
from somewhere else. They had big ships, like Zeppelins, only they moved as fast
as planes, and they had some kind of a searchlight that killed people, zip, like
that, without even leavin' a mark on 'em. Everybody on Earth was fightin' with
each other then, so we was what you might call prepared. We held 'em off for a
month or so.
"They didn't have no guns or anything that blew up when it hit, only these ray
things, but they was bad enough. Finally, just when it looked like maybe we was
goin' to clean up on 'em, they thought up a bomb o' their own. It did what you
saw in New York. Three of 'em, they dropped there. No noise. Just puffs o' fire,
blue-white like flash powder, and nothin' left but slag. The air was settlin'
fine white dust all over everything for days afterwards. They say they went all
around the Earth like that. Didn't miss a major city anywhere. We got a lot of
'em, but not enough, and after that they mopped up."
The tragic recital had seemed to Gregory Marshall to become only a voice, a
dead, empty voice threading dull pain through sightless night. The forest faded
and the voice drifted as from far away across leagues of blackness deeper than
space. Inside him the old bright agony was burning, and a meaningless word was
going round and round in his brain; Anne, Anne, Anne, Anne . . . over and over
again. Two sleepless, straining days flowed suddenly back over him. He passed a
hand across his eyes and sat down on the cool, damp grass.
"Nobody left but us," he said All dead . . . Anne, Anne!
"A few," said the belted man "They's others. But none of 'em's worth a cent. The
guys that live in the woods are the yellow-bellies like us, that ran and hid
when the others was fighting." He spat again and chewed viciously on the end of
the grass-stem.
Wake up, Marshall. She's dead, Marshall. You should have stayed on Mars,
Marshall. She's dead, Marshall.