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

jaw with the gun-barrel.

Mike went back and down, teeth bared in a feline snarl. Alan took one long forward stride to
finish the job—and then saw Karen. And what he saw froze him. She had paused in the doorway, and
it was surely not a trick that had twisted her smooth features into such a look of blank
astonishment. Behind her, SirColin stood frozen, too, the same incredulity on his face.

Drake turned slowly, still holding his gun ready. Then for a moment his mind went lax, and what he
saw before him had no significance at all.

For this was not the flame-scorched valley they had left.


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And it was not morning, or noon, or night. There was only a ruddy twilight here, and a flat
unfeatured landscape across which patches of mist drifted aimlessly as they watched, like clouds
before a sluggish wind. Low down in the sky hung a dull and ruddy sun that they could look upon
unblinded, with steady eyes.

Briefly, in the distance, something moved high up across the sky. There was a dark shape out there
somewhere, a building monstrously silhouetted against the sun. But the mists closed in like
curtains to veil it from his gaze, as if it were a secret to this dead world not for living eyes
to see.

SirColin was the first who came to life. He reached out a big, red-knuckled hand and barred Mike
Smith's automatic lurch forward, toward Alan and the gun.

"Not now," he burred. "Not now! You can forget about Germany. And Bizerte and Sousse and all
Tunisia too, all Africa. This is—"

Alan let his own gun sink. Their quarrel seemed curiously lacking in point now, somehow against
the light from that dying sun. For Germany and America and England had been—must have been—dust
for countless millenniums. Their way did not belong in a world from which all passion must have
ebbed forever long ago.

How long?

"It's Time," Alan heard himself whisper. "Time —gone out like a tide and left us stranded."

In the silence Karen cried, "It's still a dream—it must be!" But her voice was hushed to a half-
whisper by the desolation all around, and she let the words die. Alan shook his head. He knew.
They all knew, really. That was

part of the dream they shared. By tacit agreement none of them mentioned that cloudy interval that
had passed between their sleeping and their waking, but in it enough had seeped into their minds
to have no doubt there now. This was no shock, after the first surprise wore away.