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

million years was entitled to the respect due to old age, so I talked him out of it. He peeped into the hole
on top of it and nearly got beaned by the arm coming up with a brick, and then he chipped off a few
pieces of it, which didn't disturb the creature a bit. He found the place I'd chipped, tried to see if there
was any sign of healing, and decided he could tell better in two or three thousand years. So we took a
few shots of it and sailed on.
'Mid-afternoon we located the wreck of my rocket. Not a thing disturbed; we picked up my films
and tried to decide what next. I wanted to find Tweel if possible; I figured from the fact of his pointing
south that he lived somewhere near Thyle. We plotted our route and judged that the desert we were in
now was Thyle II; Thyle I should be east of us. So, on a hunch, we decided to have a look at Thyle I,
and away we buzzed.'
'Der motors?' queried Putz, breaking his long silence.
'For a wonder, we had no trouble, Karl. Your blast worked perfectly. So we bummed along, pretty
high to get a wider view, I'd say about fifty thousand feet. Thyle II spread out like an orange carpet, and
after a while we came to the gray branch of the Mare Chronium that bounded it. That was narrow; we
crossed it in half an hour, and there was Thyle I - same orange-hued desert as its mate. We veered
south, toward the Mare Australe, and followed the edge of the desert. And toward sunset we spotted it.'
'Shpotted?' echoed Putz. 'Vot vas shpotted?'
'The desert was spotted - with buildings! Not one of the mud cities of the canals, although a canal
went through it. From the map we figured the canal was a continuation of the one Schiaparelli called
Ascanius.
 'We were probably too high to be visible to any inhabitants of the city, but also too high for a good
look at it, even with the glasses. However, it was nearly sunset, anyway, so we didn't plan on dropping
in. We circled the place; the canal went out into the Mare Australe, and there, glittering in the south, was
the melting polar ice-cap! The canal drained it; we could distinguish the sparkle of water in it. Off to the
southeast, just at the edge of the Mare Australe, was a valley - the first irregularity I'd seen on Mars
except the cliffs that bounded Xanthus and Thyle II. We flew over the valley-' Jarvis paused suddenly
and shuddered; Leroy, whose color had begun to return, seemed to pale. The chemist resumed, 'Well,
the valley looked all right - then! Just a gray waste, probably full of crawlers like the others.
'We circled back over the city; say, I want to tell you that place was-well, gigantic! It was colossal;
at first I thought the size was due to that illusion I spoke of - you know, the nearness of the horizon - but
it wasn't that. We sailed right over it, and you've never seen anything like it!
'But the sun dropped out of sight right then. I knew we were pretty far south - latitude 60 - but I
didn't know just how much night we'd have.'
Harrison glanced at a Schiaparelli chart. 'About 60 - eh?' he said. 'Close to what corresponds to the
Antarctic Circle. You'd have about four hours of night at this season. Three months from now you'd have
none at all.'
'Three months!' echoed Jarvis, surprised. Then he grinned. 'Right! I forget the seasons here are twice
as long as ours. Well, we sailed out into the desert about twenty miles, which put the city below the
horizon in case we overslept, and there we spent the night.
'You're right about the length of it. We had about four hours of darkness which left us fairly rested.
We ate breakfast, called our location to you, and started over to have a look at the city.
'We sailed toward it from the east and it loomed up ahead of us like a range of mountains. Lord,
what a city! Not that New York mightn't have higher buildings, or Chicago cover more ground, but for
sheer mass, those structures were in a class by themselves. Gargantuan!
'There was a queer look about the place, though. You know how a terrestrial city sprawls out, a
nimbus of suburbs, a ring of residential sections, factory districts, parks, highways, There was none of
that here; the city rose out of the desert as abruptly as a cliff. Only a few little sand mounds marked the
division, and then the walls of those gigantic structures.
'The architecture was strange, too. There were lots of devices that are impossible back home, such
as set-backs in reverse, so that a building with a small base could spread out as it rose. That would be a