"Rocklynne, Ross - Time Wants a Skeleton" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rocklynne Ross)

TIME WANTS A SKELETON
Astounding Science Fiction June by Ross Rocklynne (1913- )

Asteroid No. 1007 came spinning relentlessly up.
Lieutenant Tony Crow's eyes bulged. He released the choked U-bar frantically, and pounded on the auxiliary underjet controls. Up went the nose of the ship, and stars, weirdly splashed across the heavens, showed briefly.
Then the ship fell, hurling itself against the base of the mountain. Tony was thrown from the control chair. He smacked against the wall, grinning twistedly. He pushed against it with a heavily shod foot as the ship teetered over, rolled a bit, and then was stillЧstill, save for the hiss of escaping air.
He dived for a locker, broke out a pressure suit, perspiration pearling his forehead. He was into the suit, buckling the helmet down, before the last of the air escaped. He stood there, pained dismay in his eyes. His roving glance rested on the wall calendar.
"Happy December!" he snarled.
Then he remembered. Johnny Braker was out there, with his two fellow outlaws. By now, they'd be running this way. All the more reason why .Tony should capture them now. He'd need their ship.
He acted quickly, buckling on his helmet, working over the air lock. He expelled his breath in relief as it opened Nerves humming, he went through, came to his feet, enclosed by the bleak soundlessness of a twenty-mile planetoid more than a hundred million miles removed from Earth.
To his left the mountain rose sharply. Good. Tony had wanted to put the ship down there anyway. He took one reluctant look at the ship. His face fell mournfully The stern section was caved in and twisted so much it looked ridiculous. Well, that was that.
He quickly drew his Hampton and moved soundlessly around the mountain's shoulder. He fell into a crouch as he saw the gleam of the outlaw ship three hundred yards distant across a plain, hovering in the shadow thrown by an over-hanging ledge.
Then he saw the three figures leaping toward him across the plain. His Hampton came viciously up. There was a puff of rock to the front left of the little group. They froze.
Tony left his place of concealment, snapping his headset on.
"Stay where you are!" he bawled.
The reaction was unexpected. Braker's voice came blasting back.
"The hell you say!"
A tiny crater came miraculously into being to Tony's left. He swore, jumped behind his protection, came out a second later to send another projectile winging its way. One of the figures pitched forward, to move no more, the balloon rotundity of its suit suddenly lost. The other two turned tail, only to halt and hole up behind a boulder gracing the middle of the plain. They proceeded to pepper Tony's retreat.

Tony shrank back against the mountainside, exasperated beyond measure. His glance, roving around, came to rest on a cave, a fault in the mountain that tapered out a hundred feet up.
He stared at the floor of the cave unbelievingly.
"I'll be double-damned," he muttered.
What he saw was a human skeleton.
He paled. His stomach suddenly heaved. Outrageous, haunting thoughts flicked through his consciousness. The skeleton wasЧhorror!
And it had existed in the dim, unutterably distant past, before the asteroids, before the human race had come into existence!
The thoughts were gone, abruptly. Consciousness shuddered back. For a while, his face pasty white, his fingers trembling, he thought he was going to be sick. But he wasn't. He stood there, staring. Memories! If he knew where they came fromЧ His very mind revolted suddenly from probing deeper into a mystery that tore at the very roots of his sanity!
"It existed before the human race," he whispered. "Then where did the skeleton come from?'
His lips curled. Illusion! Conquering his maddening revulsion, he approached the skeleton, knelt near it. It lay inside the cave. Colorless starlight did not allow him to see it as well as he might. Yet, he saw the gleam of gold on the long, tapering finger. Old yellow gold, untarnished by atmosphere; and inset with an emerald, with a flaw, a distinctive, ovular air bubble, showing through its murky transparency.
He moved backward, away from it, face set stubbornly. "Illusion," he repeated.
Chips of rock, flaked off the mountainside by the exploding bullets of a Hampton, completed the transformation. He risked stepping out, fired.
The shot struck the boulder, split it down the middle. The two halves parted. The outlaws ran, firing back to cover their hasty retreat. Tony waited until the fire lessened, then stepped out and sent a shot over their heads.
Sudden dismay showed in his eyes. The ledge overhanging he outlaw ship crackedЧwhere the bullet had struck it.
"What the hellЧ" came Braker's gasp. The two outlaws topped stock still.
The ledge came down, its ponderousness doubled by the absence of sound. Tony stumbled panting across the plain as the scene turned into a churning hell. The ship crumbled like lay. Another section of the ledge descended to bury the ship inextricably under a small mountain.
Tony Crow swore blisteringly. But ship or no ship, he still had a job to do. When the outlaws finally turned, they were looking into the menacing barrel of his Hampton.
"Get 'em up," he said impassively.

With studied insolence, Harry Jawbone Yates, the smaller of the two, raised his hands. A contemptuous sneer merely played over Braker's unshaved face and went upward to his smoky eyes.
"Why should I put my hands up? We're all pals, nowЧtheoretically." His natural hate for any form of the law showed in his eyes. "You sure pulled a prize play, copper. Chase us clear across space, and end up getting us in a jam it's a hundred-to-one shot we'll get out of."
Tony held them transfixed with the Hampton, knowing what Braker meant. No ship would have reason to stop off on the twenty-mile mote in the sky that was Asteroid 1007.
He sighed, made a gesture. "Hamptons over here, boys. And be careful." The weapons arced groundward. "Sorry. I was intending to use your ship to take us back. I won't make another error like that one, though. Giving up this early in the game, for instance. Come here, Jawbone."
Yates shrugged. He was blond, had pale, wide-set eyes. By nature, he was conscienceless. A broken jawbone, protruding at a sharp angle from his jawline, gave him his nickname.
He held out his wrists. "Put 'em on." His voice was an effortless affair which did not go as low as it could; rather womanish, therefore. Braker was different. Strength, nerve, and audacity showed in every line of his heavy, compact body. If there was one thing that characterized him it was his violent desire to live. These were men with elastic codes of ethics. A few of their more unscrupulous activities had caught up with them.
Tony put cuffs over Yates' wrist.
"Now you, Braker."
"Damned if I do," said Braker.
"Damned if you don't," said Tony. He waggled the Hampton, his normally genial eyes hardening slightly. "I mean it, Braker," he said slowly.
Braker sneered and tossed his head. Then, as if resistance was below his present mood, he submitted.
He watched the cuffs click silently. "There isn't a hundred-to-one chance, anyway," he growled.
Tony jerked slightly, his eyes turned skyward. He chuckled.