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

intangible tides. He stared into grayness that swam as formlessly as his swimming mind, and
eternity lay just beyond it. He was quite content to lie still here, rocking upon the long, slow
ages.

Reluctantly, after a long while, he decided that it was no longer infinity. By degrees the world
came slowly into focus—a vast curve of a dim and glowing hollow rounded out before his eyes,
mirrory metal walls, a ceiling shining and golden, far above. The rocking motion was imperceptibly
ceasing, too. Time no longer cradled him upon its ebb and flow. He blinked across the vast hollow
while k memory stirred painfully. It was quiet as death in here; but he should not be alone.

I Karen lay a little way from him, her red hair showering [across the bent arm pillowing her
head. With a slow,

impersonal pleasure he liked the way the curved lines of her caught shadow and low light as she
sprawled there asleep.

He sat up very slowly, very stiffly, like an old man. Memory was returning—there should be others.
He saw them in a moment, relaxed figures dreaming on the shining floor.

And beyond them all, in the center of the huge sphere, was the high, dark doorway, narrow and
pointed at the top like an arrow, within which blackness would be lying curdled into faintly
visible clouds of deeper and lesser darkness. That was the Alien. The name came painfully into his
brain, and his stiff lips moved soundlessly, forming it. He remembered—what did he remember? It
was all so long ago it really couldn't matter much now, anyhow. He thought of the slow-swinging


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years upon which he had rocked so long.

He frowned. Now how did he know it had been Time that rocked him in his sleep? Why was he so sure
that years had ebbed like water through the darkness of this mirrory place and the silence of his
dreams? Dreams! That must be it! He had dreamed—about the Alien, for instance. He had not known
that name when he fell asleep. His mind was beginning to thaw a bit, and now there was a sharp
distinction in it between the things that had happened before this sleep came upon him—and
afterward.

Afterward, in the long interval between sleeping and waking, the Alien was a part of that
afterward. The things he dimly knew about it must have come floating into his mind from somewhere
entirely outside the past he remembered. He closed his eyes and struggled hard to recall those
dreams.

No use. He shook his head dizzily. The memories swam formlessly just out of Conscious reach.
Later, they might come back—not now. He stretched, feeling the long muscles slip pleasantly along
his shoulders. In a moment or two the others would be waking.

It would be wiser if they woke unarmed. Whatever had been happening here in the dim time while
Alan slept, Karen and Smith would wake enemies still. From here he could see that a revolver lay
on the shining floor under Karen's hand. He got up stiffly, conscious of an overwhelming