"181 (B182r) - Up From Earth's Center (1949-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Gilmore shuddered and said, "I don't always see you, do I?"



"Huh?"



"Us?" Gilmore continued, selecting carefully from the words the pleasant voice had said. "Us? We? Is there more than one of you now?"



"There are eighteen of us," the voice said. "Say, what's the matter with you, fellow?"



"So you went back for more experienced help!" Gilmore went on.



"Eighteen of you!" croaked Gilmore. "Good God! They must have depleted the staff!"



"What staff?"



"The executive personnel in hell!" said Gilmore bitterly.



"Who are you kidding?" the amiably friendly voice inquired.



Now Gilmore swung around, to stare at the stranger, and to lose his composure until he was a shaking, gibbering man. Gilmore saw, standing before him, a tall middle-aged man with a fat ruddy face and a sheepskin greatcoat and a faint odor of good hair pomade that oddly fitted the icy island wind. Gilmore saw beyond the man, on the chopping sea, a sailing yacht of about eighty feet waterline, schooner-rigged, and on the beach a dory with shipped oars and a couple of waiting sailors in thick blue peacoats.



Strangers all. Man, yacht, dory, sailors, all strangers and inconceivable. Unacceptable, an illusion, a figment concocted out of ghastly chicanery, a work of Satan as far as Gilmore could understand.



So Gilmore darted off the rock and fled screaming and whimpering, going as fast as a starvation-ridden string of bones could travel. Dr. Karl Linningen caught him easily, although the doctor was a portly, languid individual who secretly believed that exercise was poisonous.