"David Lindsey - A Voyage to Arcturus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lindsay David)

was compelled to encircle her waist with it.
Directly he did so, he realised that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one
purpose only - to inflame his desires.
The third arm possessed a function of its own, of which hitherto he had been ignorant. It was a
developed magn. But the stream of love which was communicated to it was no longer pure and noble - it
was boiling, passionate, and torturing. He gritted his teeth, and kept quiet, but Oceaxe had not plotted
the adventure to remain unconscious of his feelings. She looked around, with a golden, triumphant smile.
"The ride will last some time, so hold on well!" Her voice was soft like a flute, but rather malicious.
Maskull grinned, and said nothing. He dared not remove his arm.
The shrowk straddled on to its legs. It jerked itself forward, and rose slowly and uncouthly in the air.
They began to paddle upward toward the painted cliffs. The motion was swaying, rocking, and sickening;
the contact of the brute's slimy skin was disgusting. All this, however, was merely, background to
Maskull, as he sat there with closed eyes, holding on to Oceaxe. In the front and centre of his
consciousness was the knowledge that he was gripping a fair woman, and that her flesh was responding
to his touch like a lovely harp.
They climbed up and up. He opened his eyes, and ventured to look around him. By this time they
were already level with the top of the outer rampart of precipices. There now came in sight a wild
archipelago of islands, with jagged outlines, emerging from a sea of air. The islands were mountain
summits; or, more accurately speaking, the country was a high tableland, fissured everywhere by narrow
and apparently bottomless cracks. These cracks were in some cases like canals, in others like lakes, in
others merely holes in the ground, closed in all round. The perpendicular sides of the islands - that is, the
upper, visible parts of the innumerable cliff faces - were of bare rock, gaudily coloured; but the level
surfaces were a tangle of wild plant life. The taller trees alone were distinguishable from the shrowk's
back. They were of different shapes, and did not look ancient; they were slender and swaying but did not
appear very graceful; they looked tough, wiry, and savage.
As Maskull continued to explore the landscape, he forgot Oceaxe and his passion. Other strange
feelings came to the front. The morning was gay and bright. the sun scorched down, quickly changing
clouds sailed across the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely. Yet he experienced no aesthetic
sensations - he felt nothing but an intense longing for action and possession. When he looked at anything,
he immediately wanted to deal with it. The atmosphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky; attraction
and repulsion were its constituents. Apart from this wish to play a personal part in what was going on
around and beneath him, the scenery had no significance for him.
So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him.
Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.
"Cold again so quickly, Maskull?"
"What do you want?" he asked absently, still looking over the side. "it's extraordinary how drawn I
feel to all this."
"You wish to take a hand?"
"I wish to get down."
"Oh, we have a good way to go yet.... So you really feel different?"
"Different from what? What are you talking about?"' said Maskull, still lost in abstraction.
Oceaxe laughed again. "it would be strange if we couldn't make a man of you, for the material is
excellent."
After that, she turned her back once more.
The air islands differed from water islands in another way. They were not on a plane surface, but
sloped upward, like a succession of broken terraces, as the journey progressed. The shrowk had hitherto
been flying well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs confronted them, Oceaxe
did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains
like a channel. They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide;
the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When