"C. L. Moore - The Tree of Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

recurrent sound, choked and sorrowfulтАФthe sound of a woman sobbing.
The incongruity of it made him fotgetful for a moment of the peril
hovering overhead in the sun-hot outdoors. The dimness of the temple ruins
became a living and vital place for that moment, throbbing with the sound of
tears. He looked about half in incredulity, wondering if hunger and thirst
were playing tricks on him already, or if these broken halls might be haunted
by a million-year-old sorrow that wept along the corridors to drive its
hearers mad. There were tales of such haunters in some of MarsтАЩ older ruins.
The hair prickled faintly at the back of his neck ashe laid a hand on the butt
of his force-gun and commenced a cautious prowl toward the source of the
muffled noise.
Presently he caught a flash of white, luminous in the gloom of these
ruined walls, and went forward with soundless steps, eyes narrowed in the
effort lo make out what manner of creature this might be that wept alone in
time-forgotten niins~ It was a woman. Or it had the dim outlines of a woman,
huddled against an angle of fallen walls and veiled in a fabulous shower of
long dark hair. But there was something uncannily ├│dd about her. He could not
focus his pale stare upon- her outlines. She was scarcely more than a luminous
blot of whiteness in the gloom, shimmering with a look of unreality which the
sound of her sobs denied.
Before he could make up his mind just what to do, something must have
warned the weeping girl that she was no longer alone, for the sound of her
tears checked suddenly and she lifted her head, turning to him a face no more
distinguishable than her bodyтАЩs outlines. He made no effort to resolve the
blurred features into visibility, for out of that luminous mask burned two
eyes that caught his with an almost perceptible impact and gripped them in a
stare from which he could not have turned if he would.
They were the most amazing eyes he had ever met, colored like moonstone,
milkily translucent, so that they looked almost blind. And that magnetic stare
held him motionless.
In the instant that she gripped him with that fixed, moonstone look he felt
oddly as if a tangible bond were taut between them.
Then she spoke, andhe wondered if his mind, after all, had begun to give
way in the haunted loneliness of dead Illar for though the words she spokelcil
upon his ears in a gibbefishof meaningless sounds, yet in his brain a message
formed with a clarity that far transcended the halting communication of words.
And her milkily colored eyes bored into his with a fierce intensity.
тАЬIтАЩm lostтАФIтАЩm lostтАФтАЭ wailed the voice in his brain.
A rush of sudden tears brimmed the compelling eyes, veiling their
brilliance. And he was free again with that clouding of the moonstone
surfaces. Her voice wailed, but the words were meaningless and no knowledge
formed in his brain to match them. Stiffly be stepped back a pace and
looked down at her, a feeling of helpless incredulity rising within him. For
he still could not focus directly upon the shining whiteness of her, and
nothing save those moonstone eyes were clear to him.
The girl sprang to her feet and rose on tiptoe, gripping his shoulders
with urgent hands. Again the blind intensity of her eyes tOok hold of his,
with a force almost as tangible-as the
clutch of her hands; again that stream of intelligence poured into his brain,
strongly, pleadingly.