"Edmond Hamilton - A Yank at Valhalla" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

It should be noted that although unmarried at the time of this article, Hamilton
would soon marry Leigh Bracket, the award-winning author of science fiction,
mystery and western novels, and, as screen writer, of such films as The Big Sleep
(the Bogart and the Mitchum), Rio Bravo, Hatari!, and Star Wars: The Empire
Strikes Back. During the period when Hamilton was writing the now impossible to
find Captain Future stories, Ms Brackett even pinch-hit for her husband on one, The
Comet Kings, which most fans consider the best novel in the series. A close
comparison of Hamilton's best novel, The Star of Life, and Brackett's best, The
Starmen, reveals remarkable similarities of style, theme and intent and demonstrates
just how much these two authors came to influence and expand each other over the
years.

Jean Marie Stine
I
3/15/2003Chapter
The Rune Key
Bray called excitedly to me from the forward deck of the schooner.
"Keith, your hunch was right. There's something queer in this trawl!"
Involuntarily I shuddered in the sudden chill of fear. Somehow I had known that
the trawl would bring something up from the icy Arctic sea. Pure intuition had made
me persuade Bray to lower his trawl in this unpromising spot.
"Coming, Bray!" I called, and hurried through the litter of sleds and snarling dogs.
Our schooner, the sturdy auxiliary ice-breaker Peter Saul, was lying at anchor in
the Lincoln Sea, only four hundred miles south of the Pole. A hundred yards away,
the dazzling white fields of ice stretched northward тАУ a vast, frozen, scarcely
explored waste.
When we had reached the ice pack the night before, I had somehow conceived
the idea that Bray, the oceanographer, ought to try his luck here. Bray had laughed
at my hunch at first, but had finally consented.
"Are you psychic, Keith?" he demanded. "Look what the trawl brought up!"
A heavy, ancient-looking gold cylinder, about eight inches long, was sticking out
of the frozen mud. On its sides were engraved a row of queer symbols, almost
worn away.
"What in the world is it?" I breathed. "And what are those letters on it?"
Halsen, a big, bearded Norwegian sailor, answered me.
"Those letters are in my own language, sir."
"Nonsense," I said sharply. "I know Norwegian pretty well. Those letters are not
in your language."
"Not the one my people write today," Halsen explained, "but the old Norse тАУ the
rune writing. I have seen such writing on old stones in the museum at Oslo."
"Norse runes?" I blurted. "Then this must be damned ancient."
"Let's take it down to Dubman," Bray suggested. "He ought to be able to tell us."
Dubman, the waspish little archaeologist of the expedition, looked up in
annoyance from his collection of Eskimo arrowheads when we entered. Angrily he
took the cylinder and glared at it. Instantly his eyes lit up behind the thick
spectacles.
"Old Norse!" he exclaimed. "But these are runes of the most ancient form тАУ
pre-Valdstenan! What is it?"
"Maybe the runes on it can give us a clue," I said eagerly.