"(ss) Return Engagement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

He tried to sit up and open his eyes, but his mind was still not in control of his body. Some sign must have shown, however. There was a gentle touch on his forehead, and a few words obviously meant to be soothing. The words held a hint of familiarity, but he could understand none of them.

'Where am I?' he asked.

There was a sigh near him, and another voice answered. It was a strong, masculine voice with a power of command and responsibility behind it, even though there were no really deep tones. 'You would call it Mars,' the words came in oddly accented English. ,

'Mars? In a few hours?' Yet as Shawn protested, he sensed the Tightness of the answer. The weight of him was little more than a third that which he had always known.

The voice was sober and somehow withdrawn. 'Our ways

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are not your ways, man. Our science means as little to you as yours to us. We accept the way of the universe where you bend the laws of nature against themselves. Who shall say which is better? Yet for this one thing of moving beyond the distances you know, we have ways you have not.'

'Yet you speak English.'

'There have been others before you. Not many.' The voice was falling, like the ending of an organ note. 'So few. And now . . .' It died away, and then resumed more normally. 'But enough. We go to confer. Use the time until we return as you will.'

There were rustlings again, and then light shone weakly through Shawn's lids. Something touched his face, and he found his eyes opening. This time when he tried to sit up, his body obeyed, though the motion was awkward in the unfamiliar pull of the planet.

A dream, he told himself. A fantasy. He'd wake in the morning wet and soaked in the meadow, sneezing with a cold from exposure.

But he knew better. A dream like this could be none of his making. There were elements in it, as he stared about, that could never have come from his mind.

There wasn't much to see. He was in a room that must have been carved from coloured rock, and there was a sense of a great many feet of similar rock above him. The light seemed to be in the air itself, diffused and softly silver over everything. He lay on what must be a couch, but a couch with soft curves and ornaments no man could have planned. And beyond him was a fountain.

It was a tiny fountain, carved out of the wall of rock, with a thin spray of water falling over into a basin, making a soft tinkling sound. In front of the basin was the carving of a kneeling girl. This time there was only a hint of the shoulder crests of hair, but the green of the stone made the other features easier to see. No human artist could have fashioned that, and no human model could have posed for it. The girl was beautiful, but it was as if she came from a race that had descended from something related to the lighter monkeys, as

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man claimed descent from a great anthropoid ancestor of himself and the gorilla.

Then, without warning, a curtain seemed to fall across the room. It cut off most of it, leaving him with only a little space before the couch. But if the blackness was of cloth, it fell without a rustle. And behind it was the stirring of others moving into the room and finding places.

Behind the screen, the voice he took to be that of a leader began again. 'What are you called, man? I am Porreos, a prince of my people.'

'Danny,' Shawn answered. His own response surprised him. He'd not called himself that since his childhood. But he let it stand.

'Then, Danny, we have conferred. And we feel you are better for not seeing us, since you cannot remain with us. We are sorry to have brought you here, though it is too late to alter that. But you will be returned.'

Shawn puzzled over it, finding no logic to the decision. Why couldn't he remain ? Why pick him up and bring him over all the distance for nothing but this ? And why had the shell been on Earth in the first place ?

He did not think he had spoken aloud, but Porreos sighed and began to answer. 'We had hoped for a child of your race, Danny. One who could learn to live with us, as you could never do here. And the call of the shell was set for the yearning of one of your children. Strange that you should have answered. As strange as the shells that have returned to us

empty. It has been so long...'

*

Again it was the fading of an organ note. And behind it came the hint of a wailing song in many voices, a snatch of group response that cut into Shawn's nerves and brought tears to his eyes, though he could understand none of it. There was a delicacy here, a lack of strength and force, that hardly matched a race able to span space at the breathtaking speed of the shells.