"G. Stanley Weinbaum - The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

Xanthus. Pleasant thought, wasn't it? And still, I was keeping up to schedule.
'We approached the canal slowly; I remembered that this one was bordered by a wide fringe of
vegetation and that Mudheap City was on it.
'I was tired, as I said. I kept thinking of a good hot meal, and then from that I jumped to reflections
of how nice and home-like even Borneo would seem after this crazy planet, and from that, to thoughts of
little old New York, and then to thinking about a girl I know there, Fancy Long. Know her?'
'Vision entertainer,' said Harrison. 'I've tuned her in. Nice blonde - dances and sings on the Yerba
Mate hour.'
'That's her,' said Jarvis ungrammatically. 'I know her pretty well - just friends, get me? - though she
came down to see us off in the Ares. Well, I was thinking about her, feeling pretty lonesome, and all the
time we were approaching that line of rubbery plants.
'And then - I said, 'What 'n Hell!' and stared. And there she was - Fancy Long, standing plain as day
under one of those crack-brained trees, and smiling and waving just the way I remembered her when we
left!'
'Now you're nuts, too!' observed the captain.
'Boy, I almost agreed with you! I stared and pinched myself and closed my eyes and then stared
again - and every time, there was Fancy Long smiling and waving! Tweel saw something, too; he was
trilling and clucking away, but I scarcely heard him. I was bounding toward her over the sand, too
amazed even to ask myself questions.
'I wasn't twenty feet from her when Tweel caught me with one of his flying leaps. He grabbed my
arm, yelling, 'No - no - no!' in his squeaky voice. I tried to shake him off - he was as light as if he were
built of bamboo - but he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of sanity returned to me and I
stopped less than ten feet from her. There she stood, looking as solid as Putz's head!'
'Vot?' said the engineer.
'She smiled and waved, and waved and smiled, and I stood there dumb as Leroy, while Tweel
squeaked and chattered. I knew it couldn't be real, yet - there she was! 'Finally I said, 'Fancy! Fancy
Long!' She just kept on smiling and waving, but looking as real as if I hadn't left her thirty-seven million
miles away.
'Tweel had his glass pistol out, pointing it at her. I grabbed his arm, but he tried to push me away. He
pointed at her and said, 'No breet! No breet!' and I understood that he meant that the Fancy Long thing
wasn't alive.
'Man, my head was whirling!
'Still, it gave me the jitters to see him pointing his weapon at her. I don't know why I stood there
watching him take careful aim, but I did. Then he squeezed the handle of his weapon; there was a little
puff of steam, and Fancy Long was gone! And in her place was one of those writhing, black rope-armed
horrors like the one I'd saved Tweel from!
'The dream-beast! I stood there dizzy, watching it die while Tweel trilled and whistled. Finally he
touched my arm, pointed at the twisting thing, and said, 'You one - one - two, he one - one - two.' After
he'd repeated it eight or ten times, I got it. Do any of you?'
'Oui,' shrilled Leroy. 'Moi - je le comprends! He mean you think of something, the beast he know,
and you see it! Un chien - a hungry dog, he would see the big bone with meat! Or smell it - not?'
'Right!' said Jarvis. 'The dream-beast uses its victim's longings and desires to trap its prey. The bird at
nesting season would see its mate, the fox, prowling for its own prey, would see a helpless rabbit!'
'How he do?' queried Leroy.
'How do I know? How does a snake back on earth charm a bird into its very jaws? And aren't there
deep-sea fish that lure their victims into their mouths? Lord!' Jarvis shuddered. 'Do you see how insidious
the monster is? We're warned now - but henceforth we can't trust even our eyes. You might see me - I
might see one of you - and back of it may be nothing but another of those black horrors!'
'How'd your friend know?' asked the captain abruptly.
'Tweel? I wonder! Perhaps he was thinking of something that couldn't possibly have interested me,