"Gardner F. Fox - Temptress Of The Time Flow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fox Gardner F)

blinding inferno of heat and sand, a water carafe and a packet of food
capsules tucked in his belt.
He threw his compass away when he saw the black splotch on the
horizon, two days later.
It hung low, like a black sail bellying in the wind. All around it, like the
frame for a black negative, stood the ruined columns and tumbled stone
blocks of an ancient Thaman temple. Six thousand years ago, a lost race
had worshipped and sacrificed to its forgotten gods, among those
ornamented columns and porticoes. Now the white pillars were bare of
paint, smooth and rounded as by a million sandstorms. And beyond the
white platform, as if balanced on its edge, stood the black splotch.
Its blackness quivered and shifted, like a hole cut in space that was torn
by the terrible storms that whipped between the stars. It whispered
sibilantly, as if linen were being stroked across linen.
Trenton went up the tumbled steps and onto the broad white platform.
He approached very close to the billowing splotch.
He called softly, "I've come from Beutel. Can you hear me--over there?"
There was no answer. He had scarcely expected any, but he had made
the effort. The redhead in the tavern told him that once in a while the
other ones watched the black hole, that once in a while they showed
themselves. They had shown themselves to Beutel: had shown themselves
and told him things. That was why Beutel let go of himself with the
procystal.
The redhead had told him, "Beutel says they can cross from the other
side, but not from our side. If you were to attempt to go through you'd be
snuffed out. By what? Only Beutel knew and he didn't tell me. Even when
he was drunk, he was afraid to say why. He only whispered once, 'To think
it's only that. All along our concepts were wrong. It isn't the way we think
it is at all. It's entirely different!' That's what he'd say."
And that was all the talking the redhead would do, though Trenton fed
her all the rare Pakaris '79 that she could down.
Trenton walked around the ruined temple. He took out his disintor and
flipped of the safety catch and holstered it. He smoked a glowette until he
burned the flesh on his fingertips. He waited.
SOMEONE from over there would see him, if he waited long enough.
 He saw the face just as the huge whitish mass of Procyon dropped
toward the horizon. The blackness stirred and swirled, and there was a
cowl of some dark material; and under the shadow of the cowl, livid brown
eyes burning at him, blazing with some strange, urgent message. The face
itself was thin and pasty-white, as though touched by the hand of some
lingering death.
The lips opened and moved, but there was no sound.
Then the face was gone.
Instead, a girl was stepping through the blotch of blackness, onto the
flat, crumbled stone of the archway. She was not a tall as he, by half a foot.
Her eyes were violet under long, yellow lashes. Her thick hair was swept in
twisted plaits on top her shapely head. A thin white garment, moulded to
her body by the breeze, was looped over one white shoulder and down
under the armpit of her other arm. It was girdled by a thin belt of golden
links.