"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 23 - The Harpers of Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

small square metal case, with a
strange face of artificial lens-eyes and
resonator-mouth, hovering in the
darkness.
To himself, Simon seemed almost a
bodiless ego. He could not see his
own strange body. He was conscious
only of the steady, rhythmic throbbing
of the serum-pump that served as his
heart, and of the visual and auditory
sensations that his artificial sense-
organs gathered for him.
His lenslike eyes were capable of
better vision under all conditions than
the human eye, but even so he could
not penetrate the shifting, tumultuous
shadows of the valley. It remained a
mystery of shaking moonlight, mist
and darkness.
It looked peaceful. And yet the
message of this stranger, Keogh, had
cried for help against an evil too great
for him to fight alone.
Simon was acutely conscious of the
T
dreary rustling of the lichens. His
microphonic auditory system could
hear and distinguish each separate tiny
note too faint for normal ears, so that
the rustling became a weaving,
shifting pattern of sound, as of ghostly
voices whispering -a sort of
symphony of despair.
Pure fancy, and Simon Wright was
not given to fancies. Yet in these
nights of waiting he had developed a
definite sense of foreboding. He
reasoned now that this sad whispering
of the forest was responsible, his brain
reacting to the repeated stimulus of a
sound-pattern.
Like Curt, he hoped that Keogh
would come soon.
Time passed. The Rings filled the
sky with supernal fire, and the moons
went splendidly on their eternal way,
bathed in the milky glow of Saturn.
The lichens would not cease from
their dusty weeping. Now and again
Curt Newton rose and went restlessly