"Raymond Jones - Renegades of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Raymond)

forget, a smile that relaxed the barrier she kept about herself.

"Joe SimmonsтАФI think I would like to be your friend," she
said.


II
She carried a belt at her waist, which Joe had paid little
attention to. The belt bore little packets, closed by snap
fasteners. Tamarina opened one of these and removed eight
crimson, glowing cubes. The moment they were free of the
container they seemed to burst into radiant fire so intense Joe
could no longer look at them.

Tamarina shielded her eyes and walked up the beach. She
paused and laid one of the cubes carefully on the sand, then
moved as if pacing an exact distance and deposited another one.
She continued until she had arranged all eight in a square
pattern as large as the beach permitted, about a hundred yards
on each side.

She returned to Joe. "A beacon," she said. "They will be
scanning for us and should detect the emission of this pattern as
they sweep through. We must hope that we are not beyond their
range."

Joe regarded the glowing cubes lying on the sand. It seemed
as if their light was increasing in intensity by the minute. He
could glance at them only for a moment, even at the distance to
which Tamarina had moved them. There was now a square
column of crimson glow rising from the beach to the gray ceiling
of clouds.

He didn't ask her who "they" were.

Tamarina moved toward a crag rising out of the sand. She sat
with her back against the rock, slumped in utter exhaustion. The
setting of the cubes seemed to have been her mission. With it
completed, she was drained of the immense energy that had
driven her through the jungle and the grass faster than Joe
Simmons could go.

Her eyes swept slowly over the. ugly seascape as if seeking a
sign of some distant shore, or perhaps a vessel that would take
them away, Joe thought. Nothing appeared to break the sweep of
brown, dismal sea. Overhead, the sky was fast darkening, and the
rain was turning colder. A chill wind was rising off the sea.
Tamarina had rejected the idea of building a shelter earlier, and
now it was too late to try. It would soon be completely dark,
except for the eerie crimson glow of the cubes. They would have