"A. E. Van Vogt - The Players of Null-A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

There was a pause. The Follower seemed to be in meditation. I must warn you,' he said at last, 'that Gosseyn is an
unusual individual. Whether this will affect events or not, I do not know. There seems no reason why it should, but still
there is the possibility. Take heed.'
The man shrugged. I can only do my best. I'm not worried.'
'You will be removed in due course in the usual fashion. You can wait here or on Venus.'
'Venus,' said the man.
'Very well.'
There was silence. The Follower moved slightly, as if to free himself from the restraint of the other's presence. The
shadow shape of him seemed suddenly less substantial. The street lamp shone sharply through the black substance that
was his body, but even as the misty thing grew duller, vaguer, less clearly marked, it held together, held its form. It
vanished as a whole, and was gone as if it had never been.
Janasen waited. He was a practical man, and he was curious. He had seen illusions before, and he was partially
convinced that this was one. After three minutes, the ground glowed. Janasen retreated warily.
The fire raged furiously, but not so violently that he did not see the inner works of a machine with intricate parts as
the white, hissing flames melted the structure into a shapeless mass. He did not wait for the end, but started to walk
along the pathway that led down to a robocar station.
 Ten minutes later he was deep in the city.
The transformation of time energy proceeded at its indeterminable pace to the hour of 8:43 a.m. on the first Thursday
of March, 2561 A.D. The accident to Gilbert Gosseyn was scheduled for 9:28.
8:43 a.m. At the spaceport on the mountain above the city, the Venus-bound President Hardie floated into take-off
position. It was due to leave at one o'clock in the afternoon.
Two weeks had passed since the Follower and his henchman looked down at the city from a world bathed in night. It
was two weeks and a day since a bolt of electricity had spouted from an energy cup in the Institute of General
Semantics, and bloodily sheared off the head of Thorson. As a result within three days the fighting in the city proper
had ended.
Everywhere robotools whirred, buzzed, hissed and worked under the direction of their electronic brains. In eleven
days a gigantic city came back to life, not without sweat, not without men having to bend their backs beside the
machines. But the results were already colossal. Food supply was back to normal. Most of the scare of battle were
gone. And, of overwhelming importance, the fear of the unknown forces that had struck at the solar system from the
stars was, fading more with each bit of news from Venus, and with each passing day.
8:30 a.m. On Venus, in the pit that had once been the secret galactic base of the Greatest Empire in the solar system,
Patricia Hardie sat in her tree apartment studying an abridged stellar guidebook. She was dressed in a three-day casual
which she would wear today only before destroying it. She was a slender young woman whose good looks were
overshadowed by another more curious quality--an air of authority. The man who opened the door and came in at that
moment paused to gaze at her, but if she had heard his entrance, she gave no sign.
Eldred Crang waited, faintly amused, but not offended. He respected and admired Patricia Hardie, but she was not
yet fully trained in the Null-A philosophy, and therefore she still had set techniques of reaction, of which she was
probably unaware. As he watched she must have gone through the unconscious process of accepting the intrusion, for
she turned and looked at him.
'Well?' she asked.
The lean man walked forward. 'No go,' he said.
'How many messages is that?
'Seventeen.' He shook his head. 'I'm afraid we've been slow. We took it for granted Gosseyn would find his way back
here. Now our only hope is that he'll be on the ship that leaves Earth today for Venus.тАЩ
There was silence for a while. The woman made some marks with a needle-sharp instrument in the guidebook. Each
time she touched the page, the material glowed with a faint bluish light. She shrugged finally.
'It can't be helped. Who'd have thought Enro would discover so quickly what you were doing? Fortunately, you were
prompt, and so his soldiers in this area are scattered to dozens of bases, and are' already being used for other purposes.'
She smiled admiringly. 'You were very clever, my dear, releasing those soldiers to the tender mercies of base
commanders. They're all so eager to have more men in their sectors that when some responsible officer gives them a