"Jack Williamson - Through the Purple Cloud Part" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

A RATHER pretty girl was seated across from George Cleland, on the other side of the aisle. They
were in the rear compartment of the gigantic, four-motor Al Fokker passenger plane, just taking off from
the Alhambra field at Los Angeles, for the three-hour flight to San Francisco тАФ or rather, to meet as
weird and astounding an adventure as ever befell human beings. George was returning to his office in San
Francisco, and to his engineering work after a summer's vacation.
He watched the girl with interest as the steward handed her the little package of absorbent cotton
with which to stop her ears against the oppressive roar of the motors. Clearly it was her first long flight.
Her smooth cheeks were flushed with excitement; her shining gray eyes looked up quickly to see what
the other passengers were doing with the cotton.
Her eyes met George's. She smiled at him a little, accepting him as a companion in the adventure of
the flight. He grinned, instructing her to twist the soft cotton into cylinders, and fit them into her ears. She
smiled her thanks. Already the great plane had rolled across the field with ever-increasing speed,
powerful motors thundering, had left the ground to rise easily through the low, gray fog, into the brilliant
sunlight of the August morning.
George liked the girl. She was pretty. Soft brown hair, glistening with ruddy lights, tastefully arranged.
Bright face flushed with excitement. Gray eyes shining.
She wore a dark green traveling suit, neat and trim. The body beneath it seemed to be neat and trim,
too; athletic and well-developed. She looked like a co-ed. He remembered that the University at
Berkeley would open in a few days, and supposed that she was flying up to attend it.
Two other men were sitting in that rear compartment with themтАФthe great plane did not have a full
load and four of the seats were empty. Facing George was a slender, meager, little, man, whose black
suit was polished with wear. He wore enormously thick-lensed glasses, and his face was narrow,
pinched, bird-like, so that he gave George's imaginative mind the suggestion of a grotesque, goggle-eyed
monster.
Presently he leaned forward, however, with the Map of the route that the steward had handed him,
introduced himself as Howard Cann, said that he owned a dry goods store in Oakland, and asked
George to help him locate the observatory which, according to the map, should be in sight on Mt.
Wilson. His voice sounded thin and bird-like, above the unceasing roar of the motors. George pointed
out the silver domes and towers shimmering on the crest of the mountain, in the bright August sunlight.
Cann nodded his thanks, and bent over the map again.
The other man was sunk sullenly into a seat facing the girl. George did not like him. His clothes fitted
his bull-like form loosely, grotesquely. His heavy-jowled face was black with a short stubble of beard.
From beneath a disreputable cape, pulled low over his forehead, he was staring at the girl, rather to her
discomfort.

THE world of our senses, we are coming to learn, is not actually the world that exists in
reality. What the real world may be, we have no means of knowing. Even our laws of nature
are the product of our sensual observations, and may be fraught with as many errors as our
other conceptions of the universe.
Einstein has introduced into our scientific thinking an almost, limitless vista of new
worlds. Since everything is relative and nothing absolutely real, conceptions of other
dimensions existing side by side with our own take on more of a semblance of probability.
Those other dimensions may not be expected to be like our own world, they may be strange
beyond all imagination.
Mr. Williamson is admirably fitted to deal with such bizarre worlds. His fluent, picturesque
style conjures up instant images of strange places, and in the present story he tells us of a
world that the immortal Edgar Allan Poe might have created.

His ferret eyes were black, shifty. George noticed that he swept the compartment watchfully with
them, at intervals, always resuming his annoying gaze at the girl. I wouldn't like to meet him on a dark