"C. L. Moore - Shambleau" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

her lips,
swiftly, hungrily.
Approaching footsteps on the red pavement interrupted Smith's reply. A dryland Martian came past,
reeling a little and exuding an aroma of segir-whisky, the Venusian brand. When he caught the red
flash of the girl's tatters he turned his head sharply, and as his segir-steeped brain took in the
fact of. her presence he lurched toward the recess unsteadily, bawling, "Shambleau, by Pharoll
Shambleau!" and reached out a clutching hand.

Smith struck it aside contemptuously.
"On your way, drylander," he advised.
The man drew back and stared, blear-eyed.
Oh! Yours, eh?" he croaked. ."Zut! -You're welcome to it!"
And like the ex-Patrolman before him he spat on the pavement and turned away, muttering harshly in
the blasphem-ous tongue of the drylands.


Smith watched him shuffle off, and there was a crease be-tween his colorless eyes, a nameless
unease rising within him.

"Come on," he said abruptly to the girl. "If this sort of thing is going to happen we'd better
get indoors. Where shall I take you?"
"With you," she murmured.
He stared down into the flat green eyes. Those ceaselessly pulsing pupils disturbed him, but it
seemed to him, vaguely, that behind the animal shallows of her gaze was a shutter-- -a closed
barrier that might at any moment open to reveal the very deeps of that dark knowledge he sensed
there.

Roughly he said again, "Come on, then," and stepped down into the street. -
She pattered along a pace or two behind him, making no effort to keep up with his long strides,
and though Smith -as men know from Venus to Jupiter's moons-walks as soft-ly as a cat, even in
spacemen's boots, the girl at his heels slid like a shadow over the rough pavement, making so
little sound that even the lightness of his footsteps was loud in the empty street.
Smith chose the less frequented ways of Lakkdarol, and somewhat shamefacedly thanked his nameless
gods that his lodgings were not far away, for the few pedestrians he met turned and stared after
the two with that by now familiar mingling of horror and contempt which he was as far as ever from
understanding.
The room he had engaged was a single cubicle in a lodg-inghouse on the edge of the city.
Lakkdarol, raw camp-town that it was in those day, could have furnished little better anywhere
within its limits, and Smith's errand there was not one he wished to advertise. He had slept in
worse places than this before, and knew that he would do so again.

There was no one in sight when he entered, and the girl slipped up the stairs at his heels and
vanished through the door, shadowy, unseen by anyone in the house. Smith closed the door and
leaned his broad shoulders against the panels, regarding her speculatively.
She took in what little the room had to offer in a glance -frowsy bed, rickety table, mirror
hanging unevenly and cracked against the wall, unpainted chairs-a typical camp-town room in an
Earth settlement abroad. She accepted its poverty in that single glance, dismissed it, then
crossed to the window and leaned out for a moment, gazing across the low roof-tops toward the
barren countryside beyond, red slag under the late afternoon sun.
"You can stay here," said Smith abruptly, "until I leave town. I'm waiting here for a friend to