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

lassitude, and leaned to take the gun from her relaxed fingers.

Above her as he straightened he saw the high, arched doorway, and a sudden shock jolted him. For
that dark and narrow portal was untenanted now. Nothing moved there, no curdled darkness, no swirl
of black against black. The Alien was gone.

Why he was so certain, he did not know. No power on earth, he thought, could have drawn him to
that arrow-shaped doorway to peer inside. But without it, he still knew they were alone now in the
great empty shell of the ship.

He knew they had all come in here, out of the desert night and the distant thunder of sea-
fighting—come in silence and obedience to a command not theirs to question. They had slept. And in
their sleeping, dreamed strangely. The Alien, hovering in the darkness of its doorway, must have
controlled those dreams. And now the Alien had gone. Where, why, when?

Karen stirred in her sleep. The dreams were still moving through her brain, perhaps; perhaps she
might remember when she woke, as he had not. But she would remember,

too, that they were enemies. Alan Drake's mind flashed back to the urgent present, and he stepped
over her, past Sir Colin, to Mike Smith. He was lying on his side with a hand thrust under his
coat as if even in the mindless lassitude which had attended their coming here, he had reached for
his weapon.

Mike Smith groaned a little as Alan rolled him over, searching for and finding a second gun. An
instinctive antagonism flared in Alan as he looked down upon the big, bronzed animal at his feet.
Mike Smith, soldier of fortune, had battled his way across continents to earn the reputation for
which Nazi Germany paid him. A reputation for tigerish courage, for absolute ruthlessness. One
glance at his blunt brown features told that.

Karen sat up shakily. For a full minute she stared with blind blue eyes straight before her. But
then awareness suddenly flashed into them and she met Alan's gaze. Like a mask, wariness dropped
over her face. Her finger closed swiftly, then opened to grope about the floor beside her.
Simultaneously she glanced around for Mike.

Alan laughed. The sound was odd, harshly cracked, as if he had not used his throat-muscles for a
long time.

"I've got the guns, Karen," he said. A distant ghost mocked him from the high vaults above them.
"Guns—Karen—guns—Karen. . . ."

She glanced up and then back again, and he wondered if a little shudder ran over her. Did she
remember? Did she share this inexplicable feeling of strange nameless loss, of wrongness and


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disaster beyond reason? She did not betray it.

Mike Smith was getting slowly to his feet, shaking his head like a big cat, groping for the guns