"Robert F. Young - Neither Stairs Nor Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

going to pop out of their sockets and fall into the bed of flowers. She seemed bereft of movement, and
for a long while she went on kneeling at his feet somewhat in the manner of a supplicating statue, although
the effect was somewhat marred by the coarse garment that covered her from neck to ankles. At last,
however, she came back to life, and after standing up, she backed across the clearing in a series of
curtsies that bordered on genuflections, and disappeared among the trees.
To say that Anaxel was puzzled by her actions would be gainsaying the truth. He simply wasn't
interested enough to be puzzled. He was a technician, not an anthropologist, and while he knew enough
about the world on which he stood to be aware that this particular section of it was in the middle of a
dark-ages period, he hadn't the slightest desire to embellish his knowledge with details. When he returned
to the mother-ship he would, in accordance with regulations, turn in a written report of everything he had
seen and heard, but he could see little point in seeing or hearing any more than he actually had to. He had
a one-track mind, and at the moment all that concerned him was the location of the main uranium-oxide
deposit. Hence, far from being puzzled by the, young woman's actions, he forgot all about her two
seconds after she disappeared into the forest.
But, while Frau Schnabel may have aroused no interest in Anaxel, Anaxel aroused plenty of interest
in Frau Schnabel, and unknown to him, a pair of blue eyes devoured his every movement for the rest of
the afternoon, and after dusk settled over the forest and he started back to the ship, deferring his
prospecting activities till the morrow, that same pair of blue eyes were upon him every inch of the way.
They were still upon him when he reached the ship, and if he could have seen them when he gave voice
to the sonic password that activated the boarding cable, and if he could have seen them a moment later
when the thick golden cable emerged from the lock and came undulating down to the ground, he would
have bet his last murkel that in another second they would pop right out of her head. And it wouldn't have
been a bad bet either, because when the cable drew him up into the lock, they almost did.

AFTER the lock closed, Frau Schnabel headed directly for the little wood-cutter's cabin which she
shared with her middle-aged husband, Peter. Peter was already there, brooding darkly by the hearth,
when she arrived, and the word-whipping which he proceeded to give her brought tears to her blue eyes.
It was bad enough, he said, that after two years of marriage she had failed to beget him a son, without
her gallivanting in the woods every afternoon when she should be home feeding the pigs and getting his
supper. She had been dying to tell him about, her wondrous experience, but now she could not, and her
mind sought desperately for someone else she could tell about it. Alas, there was no one. Her parents
were dead, and she and Peter were the only people for miles around, save for an old woman who lived
in a run-down cabin at the edge of the woods; but Frau Schnabel had it on the very best authorityтАФher
husband'sтАФthat the old woman was a witch, and she didn't dare go near her. So she went to bed after
supper without having revealed her experience to anyone, and during the night, while she tossed and
turned beside her snoring husband in the drafty loft above the pigpen, the events of the afternoon whirled
dizzily in her head and got mixed up with her loneliness and the sweet roots she had lately developed a
craving for and the old woman who lived at the edge of the woods, and by morning they had tentatively
acquired the form which she was eventually to give them.
Peter had no sooner left the house than she was off into the woods, eager to see the marvelous
towerтАФand its resplendent occupantтАФagain. Just as she came within sight of it, the golden cable
emerged and lowered Anaxel to the ground. She gave a little gasp and hopped birdlike behind a nearby
tree and peered around the trunk. When he entered the forest, Anaxel passed so close to her that she
could have reached out and touched himтАФif she had dared. She followed, keeping as close to him as she
could, her heart hammering in cadence with her short quick steps.
All unawares of the blue eyes upon him, Anaxel headed straight for the spot where he had left off
prospecting the previous evening. By mid-morning he had the main uranium-oxide deposit pinpointed to
his satisfaction, and he transmitted the co-ordinates to the mother-ship. He wasted no time in getting out
of the danger-area. The mother-ship was above the dawn-belt and would be in a position to make the
transfer any minute now, and soon the transfer-beam would flash down out of the blue and sink its