"Henry Kuttner - The Creature From Beyond Infinity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"You and I are the only ones left alive, Theron."
The commander gnawed at his lips.
"So. And I am dying." He smiled resignedly at Ardath's sudden protest. "It's
true, Ardath. You do not realize how old I am. For years we have gone through
space, and you are the youngest of us. Unshield a port. Let me see where we
are."
"The third planet of this System," Ardath said.


He pressed a button that swung back a shutter from a nearby port in the golden
wall. They saw nothing but darkness at first. Then their eyes became
accustomed to the gloom.
The ship lay beached on a dim shore, Blackly ominous the strange world loomed
through the gray murk of vague light that filtered through the cloudy sky. A
slow drizzle of rain was falling.
"Test the atmosphere," Theron commanded.
Ardath obeyed. Spectroscopic analysis, made from outer space, had indicated
that the air here was breathable. The chemical test confirmed this. At
Theron's request, Ardath opened a spacelock.
Air surged in with a queerly choking sulphurous odor. The two men coughed
rackingly, until eventually they became accustomed to it.
"Carry me out," the commander said quietly. His glance met and locked with
Ardath's as the younger man hesitated. "I shall die soon," he insisted gently.
"But first I must-I must know that I have reached my goal."
Silently Ardath lifted the slight figure in his arms. He splashed through the
warm waves and gently laid Theron down on the barren beach. The Sun, hidden
behind a cloud blanket, was rising in the first dawn Ardathhad ever seen.
A gray sky and sea, a dark shore-those were all he actually saw. Under
Ardath's)eet he felt the world shudder with the volcanic fires of creation.
Rain and tide had not yet eroded the rocks into sand and soil. No vegetation
grew anywhere. He did not know whether the land was an island or a continent.
It ros~e abruptly frcm the beach and mounted to towering crags against the
inland skyline.
Theron sighed. His thin fingers groped blindly over the rocky surface on which
he lay.
"You are space-born, Ardath," he said painfully. "You cannot quite realize
that only on a planet can a man find a home. But I am afraid. .' . ."
His voice died away. Then it rose again, strengthened.
"I am dying but there is something I must tell you first. Listen, Ardath . . .
You never knew your mother planet, Kyria. it is light-years away from this
world. Or it was. Centunes ago, we discovered that Kyria was doomed. A
wandering planetoid came so close that it would inevitably collide with us and
destroy our civilization utterly.
"Kyria was a lovely world, Ardath."


"I know," Ardath breathed. "I have seen the films in our records."
"You have seen our great cities, and the green forests a~xd fields-" An
agonizing cough rocked the dying commander. He went on hastily. "We fled. A
selected group of us unade this space ship and left Kyria in search of a new