"C. L. Moore - The Cold Gray God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

that delicately tinted face, in the oddly averted eyes. For a moment his mind
ran backward, remembering.
Judai of Venus had been the toast of three planets a few years past. Her
heart-twisting beauty, her voice that throbbed like a dove's, the glowing
charm of her had captured the hearts of every audience that heard her sing.
Even the far outposts of civilization knew her. That colorful, throaty voice
had sounded upon Jupiter's moons and sent the ca- . dences of Starless Night
ringing over the bare rocks of asteroids and ttaKmgh the darkness of space.
And then she vanished. Men wondered awhile, and there were searches and
considerable scandal, but no one saw her again. All that was long past now. No
one sang Starless Night any more, and it was the Earth-born Rose Robertson's
voice which rang through the solar system in lilting praise of The Green Hills
of Earth. Judai was years forgotten.
Smith knew her in the first glimpse he had of that high-cheeked, rose-tinted
face. He had felt before he saw her that surely no two women of the same
generation could speak in a voice so richly colored, so throbbingly sweet. And
yet there was a hint of something alien in those gorgeously rich tones;
something indefinably wrong in her unforgettable face; something that sent a
little shock of distaste through him in the first glimpse he had of her
beauty.
Yes, his ears and his eyes told him that she was Judai, but that infallible
animal instinct which had saved him so often in such subtly warning ways told
him just as surely that she was not-could not be. Judai, of all women, to make
such un-Venusian errors of intuition! Feeling a little dizzy, he sat back and
waited.
She glided across the floor to his side. The subtly provocative sway of her
body as she moved was innately Venusian, but she moved to the couch beside him
and allowed her body to touch his in a brushing contact that sent a little
thrill through him involuntarily, though he moved away. No, Judai would never
have done that. She would have known better.
"You know me-yes?" she queried, richly murmurous.
"We haven't met before," he said non-committally.
"But you know Judai. You remember. I saw it in your eyes. You must keep my
secret, Northwest Smith. Can I trust you?"
"That-depends." His voice was dry.
' 'I left, that night in New York, because something called which was stronger
than I. No, it was not love. It was stronger than love, Northwest Smith. I
could not resist it."
There was a subtle amusement in her voice, as if she told some secret jest
that had meaning to none but her. Smith moved a little farther from her on the
couch.
' 'I have been searching a long while,'' she went on in her low, rich voice,
"for such a man as you-a man who can be entrusted with a dangerous task." She
paused.
"What is it?"
' 'There is a man in Righa who has something I very much want. He lives on the
Lakklan by that drinking-house they call The Spaceman's Rest."
Again she paused. Smith knew the place well, a dark, low-roofed den where the
shadier and more scrupulously wary transients in Righa gathered. For the
Spaceman's Rest