"Moore, C L - Dust of Gods UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

without it?Ф - - -
УWithout-it,Ф said South slowly. УIТm sure of that much, anyhow. But we cсhТt leave it here. The man would simply send others, you know. With blasting material, maybe, if weТ said the place was buried. But heТd get it.Ф
YarolТs beam shifted, a white blade in the dark, to the gray, - enigmatic mound beside him. In the - glare of the
Tomlinson-tube it lay inscrutably, just as it had lain for all the eons since the god forsook itЧwaiting, perhaps, for this moment. And Yarol drew his gun.
УDonТt know what that image was made of,Ф he said, С~but rock or metal or anything else will melt into nothing in the full-power heat of a gun.Ф
And in a listening silence he flicked the catch. Bluewhite and singing, the flamO Leaped irresistibly from is muzzleЧ struck full in an intolerable violence of heat upon that gray mound which had- been a god. Rocks would have melted under the blast. Rocket-tube steel would have glowed molten. Nothing that the hands of man can fashion could have resisted the heat-blast-of a ray-gun at full strength. But in its full blue glare the mound of dust lay motionless.
Above the hissing of the flame Smith heard Yarol Сs muttered УSharIФ of ama2ement. The gun muzzle thrust closer into the gray heap, until the crystal began to glow in the reflected heat and blue sparks spattered through the darkness. And very slowly the edges of the mound began to turn red and sullen. The redness spread. A little blue flame licked up; another.
Yarol flipped off th~gun.catch and sat watching as the dust began to blaze. Presently, as the brilliance of it grew stronger, he slid down from his pedestal and made his precarious~way along the slippery crystal to the floor. Smith scarcely realized tha-t he had come. His eyes were riveted on the clear, burning flame that was once a god. It burned with a
fierce, pale light flickering with nameless evanesceht colorsЧthe dust that had been Pharol of the utter darkness burning slowly away in a flame of utter light.
And as theminutes passed and the fia~ne grew stronger, the reflections of it began to dance eerily in the crystal walls and ceiling, sending long wavers downward until the floor was carpeted with dazzles of flame. An odor of unnamable things very faintly spread upon the airЧsmoke of dead gods. . . - It went to SmithТs head dizzily, and the reflections wavered and ran together until he seemed to be sus~
pended in a space while all about him pictures of flame went writhing through the darkЧpictures of flameЧnebulous, unreal pictures waving across the walls and vanishingЧ flashing by uncertainly overhead, running under his feet, circling him round from wail to wall in reeling patterns, asif reflections made eons ago on another world had buried deep in the crystal were waking to life at the magsc touch of the burning god.
With the smoke eddying dizzily in his nostrils he
watchedЧand all about him, overhead, underfoot, the strange, wild pictures ran blurrily through the crystal and vanished. He thought he saw mighty landscapes ringed by such mountains as none of todayТs world know . . . he thought he saw a whiter sun than has shone for eons, lighting a land where rivers thundered between green banks
thought he saw many moons parading across a purple night wherein shone constellations that haunted him with familiarity in the midst of their strangeness. . . saw a green star where red Mars should be, and a far pin-prick of white where the green point ,that is Earth hangs. Cities reeled past across the crystal darkness in shapes stranger than any that history records. Peaks and spires and angled domes towered high and shining under the hot white sunЧstrange ships riding the airways.. . . He saw battlesЧweapons that have no names today blasting the tall towers into ruins, wiping great smears of blood across the crystalЧsaw triumphant marches where creatures that might have been the forerunners of men paraded in - a blaze of color through shining streets .
strange, sinuous creatures, half seen, that were men, yet not men. . . . Nebulously the history of a dead and forgotten world flared by him in the dark. -
He saw the man-things inТ their great shining cities bowing down before aЧsomethingЧ-of darkness that spread monstrously across the white-lit heavens. . . saw the beginnings of Great Pharol - . . saw the crystal throne in a room of crystal where the sinuous, man-formed beings lay face down in worshipping windrows about a great triple pedestal toward
which, for the dazzle and the darkness of it, he could not turn his eyes. Ai~d then without warning, in a mighty blast of violence, all the wild pictures in the flickering flamelight ran together and shivered before his dizzied eyes, and a great burst of blinding light leapdd&across the walls until the whole great chamber once more Сfor an instant blazed with rтdianceЧbut a radiance so searing that it did not illuminate but stunned, blinded, exploded in the very brains of the two men who watched. .
- In the flash of an instant before oblivion overtook him, Smith knew they had looked upon the death of a world. Then, with blinded eyes and reeling brain, he stumbled and sank into darkness. -
Blackness was all about them ~hen they opened their eyes again. The fire on the throne had burnt away into eternal darkness. Stumblingly they followed the white guidance of their tube-lights down the long passage and out into the upper air. The pale Martian day was darkening over the mountains.