"A. E. Merritt - The Moon Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

Stanton would take up a station on the far side of the stairway and I would
place myself opposite him on the side near Edith. The place I picked out was
less than two hundred feet from her, and I could reassure myself now and then as
to her safety as it looked down upon the hollow wherein she crouched. From our
respective stations Stanton and I could command the gateway entrance. His
position gave him also a glimpse of the outer courtyard.
"A faint glow in the sky heralded the moon. Stanton and I took our places. The
moon dawn increased rapidly; the disk swam up, and in a moment it was shining in
full radiance upon ruins and sea.
"As it rose there came a curious little sighing sound from the inner terrace.
Stanton straightened up and stared intently through the gateway, rifle ready.
"'Stanton, what do you see?' I called cautiously. He waved a silencing hand. I
turned my head to look at Edith. A shock ran through me. She lay upon her side.
Her face, grotesque with its nose and mouth covered by the respirator, was
turned full toward the moon. She was again in deepest sleep!
"As I turned again to call to Stanton, my eyes swept the head of the steps and
stopped, fascinated. For the moonlight had thickened. It seemed to
beЧcurdledЧthere; and through it ran little gleams and veins of shimmering white
fire. A languor passed through me. It was not the ineffable drowsiness of the
preceding night. It was a sapping of all will to move. I tried to cry out to
Stanton. I had not even the will to move my lips. GoodwinЧI could not even move
my eyes!
"Stanton was in the range of my fixed vision. I watched him leap up the steps
and move toward the gateway. The curdled radiance seemed to await him. He
stepped into itЧand was lost to my sight.
"For a dozen heart beats there was silence. Then a rain of tinklings that set
the pulses racing with joy and at once checked them with tiny fingers of iceЧand
ringing through them Stanton's voice from the courtyardЧa great cryЧa
screamЧfilled with ecstasy insupportable and horror unimaginable! And once more
there was silence. I strove to burst the bonds that held me. I could not. Even
my eyelids were fixed. Within them my eyes, dry and aching, burned.
"Then GoodwinЧI first saw theЧinexplicable! The crystalline music swelled. Where
I sat I could take in the gateway and its basalt portals, rough and broken,
rising to the top of the wall forty feet above, shattered, ruined
portalsЧunclimbable. From this gateway an intenser light began to flow. It grew,
it gushed, and out of it walked Stanton.
"Stanton! ButЧGod! What a vision!"
A deep tremor shook him. I waitedЧwaited.
CHAPTER V
Into the Moon Pool
"GOODWIN," Throckmartin went on at last, "I can describe him only as a thing of
living light. He radiated light; was filled with light; overflowed with it. A
shining cloud whirled through and around him in radiant swirls, shimmering
tentacles, luminescent, coruscating spirals.
"His face shone with a rapture too great to be borne by living man, and was
shadowed with insuperable misery. It was as though it had been remoulded by the
hand of God and the hand of Satan, working together and in harmony. You have
seen that seal upon my own. But you have never seen it in the degree that
Stanton bore it. The eyes were wide open and fixed, as though upon some inward
vision of hell and heaven!