"Farmer,.Phillip.Jose.-.A.Barnstormer.In.Oz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

He forgot about that. The person was a woman, nude : except for high-heeled shoes of some glittering silverish metal

and a tall conical white hat with outspread bird-wings. Her

long hair hung down almost to the back of her knees, and its

dark auburn seemed to catch the light, compress it, and shed t it as if it had become jewels. Her face was beautiful but with л just enough irregularity, a nose a trifle too long, lips a trifle ; too full, eyes a trifle too far apart, to make them nonclassical ! but highly individual. Her body was perfect, long, slim but ] wellrounded legs, hips narrow but not too narrow, a slim j waist, a big ribcage, full upstanding breasts with tiny aureoles

but big nipples. Her skin was very white. ; Hank despised peeping toms, but he could not force him->. self to go back into his room. Surely, if she did not want to be ; observed, she would have closed the curtains. Moreover,

what she was doing had made him curious. He forgot about

decency and gentleman's behavior.

She had taken the torch from the hole in top of the

four-faced sphinx's head and had stuck it in a wall-holder. : Then she went to a table and put her arms around a glass or \ crystal sphere twice as large as a basketball. She carried it to I the sphinx and placed it on the top of the crown, where it fit j snugly. ; Stover glanced southwards, the corner of his eye having

detected another breakthrough. Two more flaming balls had

rolled through, leaving their exploding companions behind.

The first was halfway through the forest, flitting phantomlike | among the trees and bushes, and it would soon be out of view ; below the plateau edge. | He looked back at the red-haired woman. She was dancing

counterclockwise around the sphinx. In her left hand was a

shepherd's staff, the shaft of which was carved with a spiral.

She raised and lowered and stabbed it in and out as she spun,

IS

Philip Jos6 Farmer

leaped, shuffled, whirled, sidestepped, bent, raised, and moved her lips. Now and then she seemed to be catching the neck of an invisible enemy in the hook at the end of her staff.

Lightning challenged the earth to a duel by slapping it in its face. He jumped, and his heart hammered. The bolt was unexpected; he had thought that the electrical fury was over. Also, the discharge had seemed to come so close to him that a cat's whisker could have measured the distance. Following the bolt, thunder rumbled as if the sky were trying to digest the spirit of anger. Lightning bridged cloud and ground again, though farther away this time.

The clearness of the sphere was gone. Something dark roiled inside it.

At the same time, the corners of the vast room darkened as if shadows were breeding in it. The blacknesses expanded like a cloud of ink shot out by an escaping octopus. It floated to the nearest lamps and passed over, but he could see the burning wicks faintly through the darkness.

A chill passed over him. His hairs felt as if they were rising.

"Jesus!" he muttered. He went back into his room and got his binoculars. Returning to the balcony, he directed the glasses towards the sphere, focussed them, and saw that there was within the sphere what looked like a miniature of the scene outside the castle. There were little black clouds and tiny threads of lightning shooting- among them and down from them.

Suddenly, six little glowing rolling balls formed on the lower part of the sphere.

The blackness filled half the room now and was sweeping towards the center where the redhead still danced like a maniac around the sphinx.