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

dying. And there is something in your blood which can save her - a resistance that our bodies lack. We need a few drops of your blood, Danny.'

Shawn got up quietly from the couch and approached the curtain. He thrust out his bared arm experimentally, surprised when it penetrated with almost no resistance. He grinned at himself as he waited.

There was the tiniest of prickings on his finger, and a brief itch. When he withdrew his hand, something like a fine mesh of cobweb lay over the end of the finger. He was sure there would be no infection.

There were stirrings but no voices behind the screen, and he waited, staring again around the limited section of the room he could see. It was beautiful. There was a shaping of beauty no man could have rendered. But there was a weakness, a lack of the very brutal force he sensed in even the ugliness that was overtaking Earth . . . And there was no lilt here either.

'Danny,' Porreos called at last. 'Danny, there is life among us in one who was dying. Your blood is our debt. Before we return you to Earth, there is another tradition which we must keep. Make one request of us, as is your right now. And if we can fulfil it, the boon is yours.'

It was what Shawn had expected. It could be no other. And there was still a surprise.

No, he thought, there could be no lilt here and none among his people. The dark force there and the fair lack of force here were neither complete. And the lilt he had named and sought could only come from a true completion. No wonder the shell had come to him in answer to his yearning. No wonder that these people sought a child of Earth while his people lost their superstitious xenophobia and even wanted alien contact from the stars.

'Porreos,' he asked, 'can you follow my thoughts?'

'A little, Danny Shawn.' The voice was reluctant, as if the admission carried unknown dangers. Then it wTas suddenly filled with intensity. 'Yes, oh yes, we can follow!'

The curtain vanished, leaving the room visible to Shawn, and he could see all of the ancient race that was left before

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him. There were less than a hundred there, green-clad and brown-garbed men, and women with delicate winglike mantles of hair. Their faces were inhuman and their tiny bodies were strange. But they were familiar as no alien being could ever be.

'Ask your boon,' the prince of the fairy folk cried. But they already knew, and there was laughter rising and smiles spreading across the elfin faces that looked up towards the human.

'Come home,' Shavvn asked them. 'Come back to-Earth. We need you!'