"Manly Wade Wellman - Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

by awe. "Those eyes, when I have seen them, have stared with a marked intensity. Now it is looking into
that shining object, it gazes fixedly."
The creature clung there for long moments. Silently the two observers studied it. At last it relaxed its
hold and came floating toward them in the crystal, growing in size, growing in detail. Close at hand they
saw its gleaming eyes, and suddenly those eyes came as though against the opposite side of the crystal,
the substance of the creature blotting out all the rest of the scene. Then, abruptly, the mist came stealing
back, obscuring every-thing.
 Challenger flung aside the cloth. He gazed at Holmes.
"We are in communication with Mars," he said dramatically.
"Communication?"
Challenger's hand scrambled for a pad of paper. He jabbed a pen into the inkwell. "Before another
moment passes, we must both record what we have seen," he pronounced. "There are materials for
you."
Silence, while both of them wrote. At last they finished and looked at each other again.
"A city, a Martian city, has been revealed to us," burst out Challenger. "And we have seen living Mar-
tians. I have written here," and he drummed his notes, "that they seem to be of a vastly
different species from ours. Perhaps something to be referred, for comparison's sake, to the
arthropodsтАФthe insects."
"Why the insects?" asked Holmes.
"Their form, for one aspect. Many thin appendages and soft muscular bodies. And you have seen that
some have wings and some have not."
"From my limited observation, I would not be sur-prised to establish that some of them at least can fly.
But they may all have that capacity."
"No, manifestly the power of flight is far from uni-versal," Challenger flung back impatiently. "Indeed,
the presence or absence of wings may well be a difference of the sexesтАФthe females may be winged,
and the males not."
"I have no basis of argument as yet, but I wonder if the Martians have not evolved to the point of
sexlessness," said Holmes, studying what he himself had written. "The wings may be artificial."
"Nonsense!" exploded Challenger. "If they are arti-ficial, would they not be attached with a harness? I
saw nothing like that, nor, I suggest, did you."
"They may well have other ways of assuming their flying apparatus than with a visible harness," said
Holmes quietly. "Reflect, Challenger, that this is an-other world on which they live, apparently with a
tremendously complicated culture of their own."
Challenger subsided, locking his shaggy brows in thought. "You may be right, Holmes," he said at last.
"It is not often that I feel obliged to retreat from a position."
"You are generous to give way," replied Holmes smiling. "Earlier today, you spoke disparagingly of
other scientists who cannot do that. But let us consider another point for the moment. Our view seems to
be from the top of a mast, and twice we have seen one of those creatures coming near and
seeming to look into our very faces, as it were. We have also noted the glints of light on the other masts.
Might it not follow that on top of our mast is some device similar to this very crystal we have here? And
that a view through that crystal gives them a look through this one at us, as a view from this one gives us
a look at them?"
"Indeed, what else?" demanded Challenger trium-phantly, as though he himself had come up with the
theory. "It is no more than sound logic, Holmes. On top of that mast on Mars is a contrivance which in
some way is powered to observe across space to the area where this crystal is located on our own
planetтАФto this very study."
"As one telegraphic instrument communicates with another, although the procedure is far more subtle
than that," said Holmes. "And these creatures on Mars may be far ahead of humanity, in more than
mechanics."
Challenger grimaced in his beard. "Next you will be suggesting that they are a biological advance on