"Philip E. High - These Savage Futurians" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Phillip E)

"Castle? Indoes?"

"Oh Gawd! Forget it, will you."

"Who is Sage?"

"Oh Gawd twice over! Sage is our wise-man—can you follow that?"

"Yes, that I understand."

"I'll chalk it up and you leave it, eh? We've a long way to go."

They came to a half-dead tree, leaning sideways curiously, its upper
branches torn and blackened.
 Berman made a gesture. "We turn off here, skirt round. If there's a
flash, drop fast."

"I don't understand you."

"How do you get by in the villages? Listen, if I shout drop flat, you throw
yourself down as fast as you can—clear?"

"Clear."

"Come on then." He led the way at right angles to the road they had
been following. It led across churned and blackened soil. Pale-looking
grass, moss and a profusion of sickly-looking white toadstools existed in
sunken hollows but on level ground it looked as if the vegetation had been
burned away.

Suddenly the bright rising sun seemed to flicker curiously and Berman
shouted: "Drop!"

Ventnor, already 'on edge' flung himself full length so heavily that he
hurt his ribs. As he did so a searing blue-green light seemed to fill his eyes
and there was an ear-splitting noise like the slamming of a gigantic door.
There was a gust of burning air which rushed above him and a hail of
fragments peppered his body. Something huge and heavy struck the
ground a bare forty paces away.

Berman rolled over, sat upright and brushed dust, twigs and lumps of
blackened soil from his clothing.

"All right, you can get up now but watch it. We could be safe for hours
or it could blow again in the next thirty paces. They can't be timed and
they don't give no warning, repeaters don't."

Ventnor stood cautiously upright. "What was it?"

"There you got me, boy. Blows every so often, sometimes twice a day,