"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

refuge.
As I pressed closer to the great palm stem the pterano-don saw the movement of my body through the umbrella of fronds directly above me. Quick as thought, its murderous beak came down to slam into the thick branch, ripping away a strip of coarse bark and missing my head by inches. I smelled the horror's vile exhalation of breath -perhaps I even tasted it, so thick was the overpowering fetor of decay - but then, before that dreadful beak could descend again, a shrill screech and fanning of air announced the arrival of yet another sky-lizard. Now there were two of them, with but a single thought in their
tiny minds.
Then, crouching beneath that fallen palm branch while two of the prehistoric past's most terrible children battled for the right to devour me, I saw what might just be a means for survival. Sooner or later one of these great flying reptiles must win the fight outright or at least frighten the other off, and then it would not be long before I fell to a vile, darting beak. But right now I saw a refuge that might just be a little more difficult to penetrate than the comparatively flimsy green foliage now protecting me.
There, where tiny wavelets washed coarse grasses only fifty feet or so away from my temporary shelter, a great coiled shell like some vast ammonite lay, but empty now of whatever species of octopus had built it. The bell-like mouth of this monster was like a small calcium cave, well over two feet in diameter. Now, keeping one eye on the battling pteranodons while their horny lizard feet hopped and stamped and their beaks darted in angry conflict, I scrambled out from under the fallen branch. I took my

chance to make a run for the coiled shell, and ... it moved!
I skidded to a trembling halt as the great shell swiveled on the grasses at the edge of the sea. A huge plated claw extended from the shadow of the bell mouth to snap shut with a pistol-shot report only inches in front of my chest. One stalked eye, then a second, edged out warily from behind the massive claw, the two swaying and observing me intently where I stood transfixed with terror. A hermit crab, by God, the biggest of its species I could ever have imagined!
Now the pink, hairy, paddle-like arachnid legs curled out from under the stalked eyes and over the lower rim of the shell's mouth. They touched and felt the ground beneath, spread themselves and braced against it, then with hideous speed the thing scuttled forward, bearing the vast shell with it!
In that moment I knew that I was done for. To this day 1 don't know exactly what happened to prove me wrong. The claw, I could have sworn it, was actually closing on my head and upper body when once again I was sent sprawling by a blow from a flapping leathery wing. One of the sky-lizards must have noticed my flight from beneath the palm branch and had hopped after me. Doubtless it regarded the attack of the crab as a threat to its own proprietary rights. There again, perhaps I flatter myself. It could be of course simply that the pteranodon preferred crab meat to my own untried, completely conjectural texture and taste. Whichever, the great crab saw the danger it was in, snatched itself back and its walking appendages commenced a rapid, jerky retraction - but not rapid enough.
The fetid beak darted over my stretched-out form to pluck the soft-bodied crab from its shell in one lightning-like snatch. The writhing victim screamed hideously,

harshly as, in the next instant, its juices squirted where the flashing beak split its black-veined body-sac. I was drenched in nameless muck as I gathered my wits sufficiently to scramble unceremoniously, and completely uncaring of the fate of its most recent resident, feet-first into the safety of the great shell's bell mouth.
I slithered backward, and as I went I snatched up from the sand a long, dagger-like Baculites shell, holding its sharp point outward. Further back yet I forced my body, until the curve of the thick shell shut off my view of the outside world, until my hips would go no further down that smooth, vacant throat. Then, trembling in a fever of reaction and terror, I waited for whatever was to come
next.
The crab was still screaming, but weaker now. Its harsh, rasping emissions soon turned to a quiet rattle and a lessening, sporadic clicking of claws. Then there was only the splintering of shell and rending of flesh, and the occasional indignant squawk or threatening, hissing cry. Obviously the two sky-lizards were sharing the crab, however unwillingly. I hoped that their tiny minds would forget all about me in the general festivities.
It must have been all of an hour later when I heard the heavy flopping of wings and fading, raucous cries that announced the departure of at least one of the pterano-dons, perhaps both of them. I waited for half an hour longer, hardly daring to breathe, before squirming my body forward until the curve of the shell's mouth formed a crescent of light with the curving main body of the shell itself. A crescent of daylight, with a distant palm bending in a freshening breeze off the sea. I used my elbow to edge myself forward a few inches more, and froze!
Sitting there waiting for me, wings folded back, its head cocked expectantly on one side and its evil red eyes gazing unblinkingly, almost hypnotically into mine, was the

second pteranodon! Oh, no, it had not forgotten me, this creature. Perhaps its now departed colleague had filled itself with the doubtless succulent flesh of the crab, but this one had obviously not been satisfied, would not be until I, too, had been made a meal of ...
But not if I had anything to say about it.
I slid backward again until I could only just see the sky-lizard, then hurriedly further back as it experimentally tried its head in the mouth of the shell. No, I was safe for the moment, it was unable to reach me. The great wedge-shaped head and beak simply could not maneuver within the shell's mouth. In fact as the pteranodon pushed harder, twisting its head as it sought to close with me, that huge wedge of head and beak jammed. In something of a panic the sky-lizard attempted to withdraw, actually rocking the vast ammonite before its head came free. For a moment or two then there was silence, but in the next instant my head was ringing to the reverberations of a series of savage blows on the exterior of the shell. Within those hollow acoustical confines the sound was deafening, a burst of machine-gun fire!
God almighty! Could the shell hold out against such a battering? The whole coil seemed to be vibrating about me. Surely it would shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment, exposing me like a bark-bug in a cracked cocoon to the beak of a hungry woodpecker! But mercifully the sharp blows soon ceased.
Following a long period of silence, thinking that perhaps the creature had given up at last and moved away, I eased myself forward again. He was still there, peering at me just as intently, his head cocked on one side as before. As I stared back at that monster I couldn't help but think of a line from Aepyornis Island by H. G. Wells: 'A great gawky, out-of-date bird! And me a human being, heir to the ages and all that.'

Oh, I know, the creature in Wells's story was a true bird and mine was a reptile; but my plight was much the same as that of Wells's hero, infinitely worse, in fact. He at least had been located in his own time: Aepyornis Vastus had been the odd-bird-out.
So the afternoon crept by. At intervals I would ease myself forward to peer out from the mouth of the great shell, invariably to find my pteranodon antagonist still laying siege on that exit with what seemed to me the patience of a prehistoric Job. Occasionally, too, there would come a burst of staccato pecking at the outer wall of the shell, to which I soon grew accustomed. And strangely enough, apart from my slight hunger and thirst, and not to mention the horror awaiting me outside, I found the coiled shell very much preferable to that pebbly crevice of the previous night. It dawned on me that I was perfectly safe where I was. Following fast on the heels of this realization my state of extreme nervous tension, the rigors of which, by then, had been sapping me for over twenty-four hours, subsided into a relaxed weariness that soon gave way to sleep.
Suddenly there came an assault upon the shell that almost tipped me from its bell mouth before I was properly awake and bracing myself against the sides of the cavity. What had it been, this rude awakening? My sleep-dulled mind could not quite grasp it. There had been a rumble as of distant thunder, then a vast stirring of the ground that tilted the shell on its side, almost tipping me out. This had shaken me roughly awake, and -
Again the ground rocked, jolting the shell wildly up and down, shaking me violently and threatening to cast me loose from my position against the curving walls. There came a frightened squawking from outside in the

night and a lurid orange glow shone dimly even through the coils of my ammonite refuge. This could only mean volcanic activity, a second eruption!
Above the low rumblings of the earth there came then a frantic flapping of leathery wings and the sudden hisss of swirling waters. I could hear the pteranodon squawking and blustering as it rose high in the disturbed air, and as I crawled from the mouth of the mammoth ammonite I saw the sky-lizard's wildly fluttering shadow cast by the glare from the distant mountains.
Out at sea the volcano was on the move again, sinking this time as secondary cones broke the surface much further out. A rush of cool water swirled about my feet, lifting the huge shell and floating it away along the beach. Hastily, with the water rising quickly to my knees, fearing a shock wave of water such as had left me in my present predicament, I backed up the beach to slightly higher ground. The expected shock wave did not come, however; instead, the disturbed water quickly subsided.
Out near the cone the whole surface of the sea sprayed up suddenly in foaming white crests, and I could see that the new volcano was quite definitely sinking. Way out beyond the reef it had formed, at a distance of what must have been five or six miles, many fires shot the darkness with lurid light, hissing and roaring as they spouted flames from the sea. Plainly I had slept all through the night, for already dawn was showing on the horizon. Even as I watched, the edge of the sun crept up to illuminate a fantastic scene.
The sea was on fire! For mile upon mile the surface of the water was lit by submarine explosions; geysers of superheated water shot into the air; turbulent waters tossed and rushed in an utter confusion of currents. Behind me the hills seemed to burn as rivers of lava began

to course down them. Away to my right these lava streams had already reached the water, sending sheets of steam hissing and searing skyward. And then a wonderful thing happened.
The last of the waters washing about my feet began a hurried retreat and, as the sun rose higher and the volcanic activity out at sea grew more furious, that retreat became an absolute rout of receding waters. Down went the reef in a sundering of ocean, back to its watery origins, and the blazing cone with it. A tremendous cloud of steam rose up then that turned the sun into a pink glow, washing the entire horizon in rose and blood tints.
The whole beach jerked and tossed now, no longer in violent spasms but rather in short, spastic rhythms that kept me adjusting my balance as I watched the spectacle of the red, retreating waters. They were in full flood now, leaving the beach bubbling and slimy and scattered with gasping fish and flopping shapes behind them. Why, at this rate -
At this rate the time-clock would soon be exposed! Somewhere out there in the mud and pebbles my time-machine lay, just waiting for the retreating waters to leave it high and dry.
I started down the beach in the wake of the fleeing ocean, beginning to run across the coarse wet sands as the sun rose up above the volcanic mists to turn the entire Cretaceous scene pink and gold. The sand sucked at my feet and various stranded creatures snapped at me in their death agonies as I sloshed past them. To my left a huge shadow grew up from the misty beach to flop awkwardly in a shallow pool. I barely gave it a second glance, however, barely recognized it as a vast tylosaurus, as a second shape, one with which I was far more familiar, suddenly appeared in a swirl of black, receding water.
The time-clock! There it was, half buried in wet sands, its narrow end pointing at thirty degrees to the sky, its

face buried deep in muck. My vessel, my gateway to the future, to the world of men!
Through a pool of warm water I splashed and struggled, dimly aware that something huge splashed after me, but I was interested in one thing only: to regain my clock and find a way to dig it from the clinging muck. Now I was almost upon it, falling beside it as finally I tripped and sprawled in the trembling, quaking sands. My hand touched the clock's peculiar wood-like texture. I trembled then in a cold sweat of frustration and fear. It would take me hours to dig the thing out, assuming that I was to have the chance!
Far down the beach seaward a massive wall of water was gathering, piling itself up for a titanic onslaught on the land. But I must at least try. Even as I began scrabbling at the wet sand and pulling uselessly at the heavy bulk of the clock a shadow fell upon me and a primal scream tore the salty, misted air.
I hurled myself flat and headlong as a monster flipper slapped down at the spot where I had crouched, spraying me with slimy pebbles and mud and half lifting the clock from the grip of the sand. The great jaws of the stranded tylosaurus struck at me, missed, fastened in terrible anger on my half buried vessel. Balanced on its massive foreflip-pers, the creature slammed its rear quarters time and again down onto the sand to assist its jaws in their action of tearing the time-clock up from its boggy bed. At last the time-machine came loose, was tossed a dozen yards as easily as a man might fling a light chair, landing on its back, face up.
As the ground began to rock more violently and the tylosaurus again turned to snap at me, I scrambled after the clock, diving on it and groping for the hidden mechanisms that would open its panel. The great sea beast

flopped after me, its body thudding down on the wet sand with each convulsive heave of gigantic flippers.