"Moore, C L - Dust of Gods UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)
relation to the otherЧthe white thing, possibly some force or eltment out of that other dimension; because just as dark:
couldnТt touch the whiteness of that thing, so light had no effect on the dark. I got the impression, somehow, that the dark space is a fixed area there, as if a section out of the other world has been-set down in the .cave, for the white thing to roam about inЧa bather of blackness across the way. And I
donТt suppose that it can move outside the darkness. But I may be wrongЧletТs go!Ф
УRight behind you!Ф said Yarol. УGet along.Ф
The cave extended for another fifteen-minute walk, cold and silent and viciously rough underfoot, but. no further mishap broke the journey. Tomlinson4ights gleaming, they traversed it, and the glow of cold day at the far end looked like the gleam of paradise after that journey through the heart of the dead rock.
They looked-out up~n the ruins of that city where once the gods had dweltЧTagged rock, great splintered teeth of stone upflung, the bare black mountainside folded and tortured into wild shapes of desolation. Here and there, buried in the debris of ages, lay huge six-foot blocks of hewn stone, the only reminder that here had stood MarsТ holiest city, once, very long ago.
After five minutes of search SmithТs eyes finally located the outline of what might, millions of years ago, have been a
street. It led strait away from the slope at the cave-mouth, and the blocks of hewn stone, the crevices and folded ruins of eaithquake choked it, but the course it once had run was not entirely obliterated even yet. Palaces and temples must have lined it once. There was no trace of them now save in the blocks of marble lying -shattered among the broken stones.
Time had erased the city from the face of Mars almost as completely as from the memories of man. Yet the trace of this one street was all they needed now to guide them.
The going was rough. Once down among the ruins it was difficult to keep in the track, and for almost an hour they clambered overbroken rock and jagged spikes of stone, leaping the crevices, skirting great mounds of ruin. Both were scratched and breathless by the time they came to the first landmark they recognizedЧa black, leaning needle of stone, half buried infragments of broken marble. Just beyond it lay two blocks of stone, one upon the other, perhaps the only two in the whole vast ruin which still stood as the hands of man had laid them hundreds of centuries ago. -- -
Smith paused beside them and looked at Yarol, breathing a little heavily from exertion.
УHere it is,Ф he said. УThe old boy was telling the truth after all.Ф - -
УSo far,Ф amended Yarol dubiously, drawing his heatgun. УWell, weТll see.Ф
The blue pencil of flame hissed from the gunТs muzzle to
- splatter along the crack between the stones. Very slowly Yarol traced that line, and in spite of himself excitement quickened within him. Two-thirds of the way along the line the flame suddenly ceased to spatter and bit deep. A blackening hole appeared in the stone. It widened swiftly, and smoke rose, and there came a sound of protesting rock wrenched from its bed of eons as the upper stone slowly ground half around. on the lower, tottered a moment and then fell.
The lower stone was hollow. The two bent over curiously, peering down. A tiny breath of unutterable antiquity rose in their faces out of that darkness, a little breeze from a million ~years ago. Smith flashed his light-tube downward and saw level stone a dozen feet below. The breeze was stronger now, and dust danced up-the shaft from- the mysterious depthsЧ dust that had lain there undisturbed for unthinkably long
ages. -
УWeТll give it awhile to air out,Ф said Smith, switching
off his light. УMust be plenty of ventilation, to judge from that breeze; and the dust will probably blow away before long. We can be. rigging up some sort of ladder while- we wait.Ф -, -
By the time a knotted m~e had been prepared and anchored about a near-by needle of rOck the little wind was blowing cleanly up the shaft, still laden with that indefinable odor of ages, but breathable. Smith swung over first, lowering himself cautiously until his feet touched the stone. Yarol, when he came down, found him swinging the Tomlinson-beam about a scene of utter lifelessness. A passageway stretched before them, smoothly polished as to walls and ceiling, with curious, unheard-of-frescoes limned in dim colors under the glaze. Antiquity hung, almost tangibly in the air. The little breeze that brushed past their faces seemed sacrilegiously alive in this tomb of dead dynasties~
That glazed and patterned passageway led downward into the dark. They followed it dubiously, feet stirring in the dust of a dead race, light-beams violating the million-years night of the underground. Before they had gone very far the circle of light from the shaft disappeared from sight beyond the up-sloping floor behind them, and they walked through antiquity with nothing bid the tiny, constant breeze upon their faces to remind them of the world above.
They walked a very long way. There was no subterfuge about the passage, no attempt to confuse the traveler. No other halls opened from itЧit led straight forward and down through the stillness, the dark, the odor of very ancient death. And when at long last they reached the end, they had passed no other corridor-mouth, no other openings at all save the tiny ventilation holes at intervals along the ceiling.
At the end of that passage a curving wall of rough, unworked stone bulged like the segment of a sphere, closing the corridor. It was a different stone entirely froth that under the patterned glaze of the way along which they had come. In the light of their Tomlinson-tubes they saw a stone door set flush with the slightly bulging wall that held it. And in the doorТs
very center a symbol was cut deep and vehement and black against the gray background. Yarol, seeing it, caught his breath.
know that sign?Ф -
УI can guess,.Ф murmured Smith, playing his light on the black outline of it.
УThe symbol of Pharol,Ф said the Venusian in a nearwhisper, but the echoes caught it and rolled back along the passage in diminishing undertones, УЧPharol. . . Pharol
Pha rollФ -
УI saw it once carved in the rock of an asteroid,Ф whispered Yarol. УJust a bare little fragment of dead stone whirling around and around through space. There was one smooth surface on it, and this same sign was cut thete. The Lost Planet must really have existed, N.W., and that must have been a part of it once, with the godТs name cut so deep that
even the explosion of a world couldnТt wipe it out.Ф
Smith drew his gun. УWeТll soon know,Ф he said. УThis will probably fall, so stand back.Ф -
The blue pencil of heat traced the doorТs edges, spattering against the stone as Yarol Сs had in the city above. And as before, in its course it encountered the weak place in the molding and the fire bit deep. The door trembled as Smith held the beam steady; it uttered an ominous creaking and began slowly to tilt outward at the top. Smith snapped off his gun and leaped backward, as the great stone slab tottered outward and fell. The mighty crash of it reverberated through the dark, and the concussion of its fall shook the solid floor and flung both men staggering against the wall.
They reeled to their feet again, shielding blinded eyes from
the torrent of radiance that poured forth out of the doorway. ItТ was a rich, -golden light, somehow thick, yet clear, and they saw almost immediately, as their eyes became accustomed to the sudden change from darkness, that it was like no light
they had ever known before. Tangibly it poured ~st them down the corridor in hurrying waves that lapped one another and piled up and flowed as a gas nu~ght have done. It was light which had an unnamable body to it, a physical, palpable body which yet did not affect the air they breathed.
They walked forward ifito a sea ofТ radiance, ,and that curious light actually eddied about their feet, rippling away from the forward motion of their bodies as water might have done. Widening circles spread away through theТ air as they advanced, breaking soundlessly against the wall, and behind them a trail of bright streaks steamed away like the wake of a ship in water.
Through the deeps of that rippling light they walked a passage hewn from ragged stone, a different stone from that of the. outer corridor, and somehow older. Tiny speckles of brightness glinted now and again on the rough walls, and neither could remember ever having seen just such mottled, bright-flecked rock before.
УDo you know what I think this is?Ф demanded Smith suddenly, after a few minutes of silent progress over the uneven floor. УAn asteroid! That rough wall bulging into the corridor outside was th~ outer part of it. Remember, the three gods were supposed to have been carried away from the catastrophe on the other world and brought here. Well, IТll bet thatТs how it was managedЧa fragment of that planet, enclosing a room, possibly, where the godsТ images stood, was somehow detached from the Lost Planet and hurled across space to Mars. Must have buried itself in the ground here, and the people of this city tunneled in to it and built a temple over the spot. No other way, you see, to account for that protruding wall and the peculiar formation of this rock. It must have come from the lost worldЧnever saw anything like it anywhere, myself.Ф
УSounds logical,Ф admitted Yarol, swinging his foot to start an eddy of light toward the wall. УAnd what do you make of this funny light?Ф
УWhatever other-dimensional Сplace those gods came
from, we can be pretty sure that light plays funny tricks there~. It must be nearly materialЧphysical. You saw it in that white thing in the cave, and in the dark that smothered our tubes. ItТs as tangible as water, almost. You saw how it flowed out into the passage when the door fell, not as real light does, but in succeeding waves, like heavy gas. Yet I donТt notice any difference in the air. I donТt believeЧsay! Look at that!Ф
He stopped so suddenly that Yarol bumped into him from behind and muttered a mild Venusian oath. Then acrossSmithТs shoulder he saw it too, and his hand swept downward to his gun. Something like an oddly shape hole opening onto utter dark had appeared around the curve of the passage. And as they stared, it moved. It was a Something blacker-than anything in human expenence could ever have been beforeЧas black as the guardian of the cave had been whiteЧso black that the eye refused to compass it save as a negative quality, an emptiness. Smith, remembering the legends of Pharol the No-God of utter nothingness, gripped his gun more firmly and wondered if he stood face to face with one of the elder gods.
The Thing had shifted is shape, flowing to a stabler oUtline and standing higher from the floor. Smith. felt thatit must haye form and thicknessЧat least three dimensions and probably moreЧbut try though he would, his eyes could not discern it save as a flat Outhne of nothingness against the
golden light. - -
And as from the white dweller in darkness, so from this black denizen of the light there flowed a force that goaded the brain to madness. Smith felt it battering in blind waves at the foundations of his mindЧbut he felt more than the reasonless urge in this force assailing him. He sensed a struggle of some sort, as if the black guardian were turning only a part of its attention to himЧas if it fought against something unseen and powerful. Feeling this, be began to see signs of that combat, in -the black outlin~s of the thing. It rippled and flowed, its shape shift~dТfluidly, it writhed in protest against something he could not comprehend. Definitely now he felt
tht it fought a desperate battle with some unseen enemy, and a little shuddei~ crawled down his back as he watched.
Quite suddenly it dawned upon him what was happening. Slowly, rolentlessly, the black nothingness was being drawn down the passage. And i~wasЧit must beЧthe flow of the golden radiance that drew it, as a fish might be carried forward down-a stream. Somehow the opening of the door must have freed the pent-up lake of light, and it was flowing slowly out down the passage as water flows, draining the asteroid, if asteroid it was. He could see now that though they had halted the wake of rippling illumination behind them did not cease. Past them in a bright tide streamed the light. And on that outflowing torrent the black guardian floated, struggling but helpless. -
It was closer now, and the beat of insistent impulses against SmithТs brain was stronger, but he was not greatly alarmed by it. The panic of the thing must be deep, and the waves of force that washed about him were dizzying but not deep-reaching. Because of this increasing dizziness, as the thing approached, he was never sure afterward just what had happened. Rapidly it drew nearer, until he could have put out his hand and touched4 itЧthough instinctively he felt that, near as it seemed, it was too far -away across- dimensional gulfs for him-ever to lay hand upon it. The blackness of it, at -
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