"Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Earth' s last Citadel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

inconceivable Presence had suddenly brimmed it from wall to wall.

Then Sir Colin's voice spoke from the dark. "Drop your guns, you two. Quick. I can—"

His voice died. Suddenly, silently, without warning, the valley all around them sprang into


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brilliant light. Time stopped for a moment, and Drake across Karen's red head could see Mike
hesitate with lifted gun, see the gangling Sir Colin tense a dozen feet beyond, see every leaf and
twig in the underbrush with unbearable distinctness.

Then the light sank. The glare that had sprung out from the great globe withdrew inward, like a
tangible thing, and a smooth, soft, blinding darkness followed after.

When sight returned to them, the globe was a great pale moon resting upon its crest of up-splashed
earth. All heat and color had gone from it in the one burst of cool brilliance, and it rested now
like a tremendous golden bubble in the center of the valley.

A door was opening slowly in the curve of the golden hull.

Drake did not know that his gun-arm was dropping, that he was turning, moving forward toward the
ship with slow-paced steps.

He was not even aware of the others crackling through the brush beside him toward that dark
doorway.

Briefly their reflections swam distorted in the golden curve of the hull. One by one they bent
their heads under the low lintel of that doorway, in silence, without protest.

The darkness closed around them all.

Afterward, for a while, the great moon-globe lay quiet, shedding its radiance. Nothing stirred but
the wind.

Later an almost imperceptible quiver shook the reflections in the curved surfaces of the ship. The
crest of earth

that splashed like a wave against the sphere washed higher, higher. As smoothly as if through
water, the ship was sinking into the sand of the desert. The ship was large, but the sinking did
not take very long.

Shortly before dawn armed men on camels came riding over the ridge. But by then earth had closed
like water over the ship from space.

I THE CITADEL

IT SEEMED to Alan Drake that he had been rocking here forever upon the ebb and flow of deep,