"Anderson, Poul - Operation Luna" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

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Witchlights glowed blue along the fence, outlining cardinal point
against night. Earth lay darker than heaven. There stars gleamed and the
Milky Way glimmered. A moon one day past full, climbing out of the east,
veiled many of them behind its own brightness. It cast pallor and long
shadows across the malpais. Northward, Mount Taylor bulked ghost gray.

When Ginny and I looked ahead and down, the glare near the middle of the
great pentacle, searchbeams focused on the spacecraft, drove most of
this from our eyes. My heart jumped to see that splendor.

Somewhere inside me I felt something different stir. The shiver
strengthened as we drew closer. It wasn't happening for the first time.
Earlier, though, it had been rare, faint and fleeting, no more than the
uneasiness everybody gets once in a while for no good reason. You don't
rub an amulet or make a religious sign or ask whatever witch or warlock
may be nearby if it means anything. No, you shrug it off as a passing
nerve-twitch. You're modern, scientific, free of superstitions. Aren't
you?

What touched me now was stronger, too vague to be a foreboding but not
just a collywobble. I'd had enough experience to know that. A hunch? I
turned my head to and fro. All I saw besides sky was the headlights of a
few other broomsticks, belated like ours. I took a long, slow breath.
Even in human shape, my nose is pretty keen. The air that flowed in was
pure and chill; temperature in New Mexico generally drops fast after
sunset. I did catch a slight ozonelike tang of goetic forces at work,
but that was to be expected hereabouts, especially tonight.

Wait, wait--a bare hint of strangeness, outsideness such as I couldn't
put a name to? Wolf, I might have been more nearly sure.

My look went back to Ginny. Since it would be only us two, we'd taken
her Jaguar instead of the family Ford. We'd left the windfield off
except in front, and breeze got by to flutter the skirt she'd chosen to
wear for this occasion. It was pressed around the downcurve of the shaft
and across a pair of long, trim legs. The sweater above hugged a figure
as good at age forty-two as it'd been when we met.

My attention stayed above the neck. Moonlight made her aristocratic
features into an ivory carving. It whitened and rippled the
shoulder-length hair. On her left breast, the silver owl emblem of her
order seemed icily afire. I saw not only her usual alertness upon her,
but a sudden wariness.

My voice sounded loud through the air whispering past us. "You feel a
spooky whiff too?"

She nodded. Her contralto had gone metallic. "Uncanny might be a better