"Murray Leinster - The Best of Murray Leinster (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

tramp of marching feet. With it came a curious clanking and clattering noise.
And then a marked command, which was definitely not in the English language.
Down the street of a suburb of Joplin, Missouri, on June 5, in the Year
of Our Lord 1935, came a file of spear-armed, shield-bearing soldiers in the
short, skirtlike togas of ancient Rome. They wore helmets upon their heads.
They peered about as if they were as blankly amazed as the citizens of Joplin
who regarded them. A long column of marching men came into view, every man
with shield and spear and the indefinable air of being used to just such
weapons.
They halted at another barked order. A wizened little man with a short
sword snapped a question at the staring Americans. The high-school boy jumped.
The wizened man roared his question again. The high-school boy stammered, and
painfully formed syllables with his lips. The wizened man grunted in
satisfaction. He talked, articulating clearly if impatiently. And the
highschool boy turned dazedly to the other Americans.
"He wants to know the name of this town," he said, unbelieving his own
ears. "He's talking Latin, like I learn in school. He says this town isn't on
the road maps, and he doesn't know where he is. But all the same he takes
possession of it in the name of the Emperor Valerius Fabricius, emperor of
Rome and the far corners of the earth." And then the school-boy stuttered,
"He-he says these are the first six cohorts of the Forty second Legion, on
garrison duty in Messalia. "That-that's supposed to be two days march up that
way." He pointed in the direction of St. Louis.
The idling motor car roared suddenly into life. Its gears whined and it
came rolling out into the street. Its horn honked peremptorily for passage
through the shield-clad soldiers. They gaped at it. It honked again and moved
toward them. A roared order, and they flung themselves upon it, spears
thrusting, short swords stabbing. Up to this instant there was not one single
inhabitant of Joplin who did not believe the spear-armed soldiers were motion
picture actors, or masqueraders, or something else equally insane but
credible. But there was nothing make-believe about their attack on the car.
They assaulted it as if it were a strange and probably deadly beast. They
flung themselves into battle with it in a grotesquely reckless valor.
And there was nothing at all make-believe in the thoroughness and
completeness with which they speared Mr. Horace B. Davis, who had only
intended to drive down to the cotton-brokerage office of which he was chief
clerk. They thought he was driving this strange beast to slaughter them, and
they slaughtered him instead. The high-school boy saw them do it, growing
whiter and whiter as he watched. When a swordsman approached the wizened man
and displayed the severed head of Mr. Davis, with the spectacles dangling
grotesquely from-one ear, the high-school boy fainted dead away.



II



It was sunrise of June 5, 1935. Cyrus Harding gulped down his breakfast in the
pale-gray dawn. He had felt very dizzy and sick for just a moment, some little