"Moore, C L - The Cold Gray God UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

could have got the box for her. And you remember how she said she'd been looking a long time for someone like yourself. No, it's the man she wants, I think. And I can't figure out why."

Smith wrinkled his brows and traced a design on the tabletop in split segir.

"I've got to know," he said stubbornly.

' 'I've passed her in the street. I've felt that same revulsion, and I don't know why. I don't like this, Smith. But if you feel you have to go through with it, that's your affair. I'll help if I can. Let's drop it, eh? What are you doing tonight? I hear there's a new dancer at the Lakktal now."

Much later, in the shifting light of Mars' hurrying moons, Smith stumbled up the little alley behind The Spaceman's Rest and entered the door in the rear of the bar. His head was a bit light with much segir, and the music and the laughter and the sound of dancing feet in the Lakktal's halls made an echoing beat through his head. He undressed clumsily in the dark and stretched himself with a heavy sigh on the leather couch which is the Martian bed.

Just before sleep overtook him he found himself remembering Judai's queer little quirking smile when she said, "I left New York because something called—stronger than love. . . ." And he thought drowsily, "What is stronger than love?..." The answer came to him just as he sank into oblivion. "Death."

Smith slept late the next day. The tri-time steel watch on his wrist pointed to Martian noon when old Mhici himself pushed open the door and carried in a tray of breakfast.

"There's been excitement this morning," he observed as he set down his burden.

Smith sat up and stretched luxuriously.

"What?"

"The canal man shot himself."

Smith's pale eyes sought out the case labeled "Six Pints Segir" where it stood in the corner of the room. His brows went up in surprise.

"Is it so valuable as that?" he murmured. "Let's look at

it."

Mhici shot the bolts on the two doors as Smith rose from

the leather couch and dragged the box into the center of the

floor. He pried up the thin board that Mhici had nailed down

the night before over the twice-stolen box, and pulled out an

object wrapped in brown canvas. With the old drylander.•$

bending over his shoulder he unwound the wrappings. For a ;j

full minute thereafter he squatted on his heels staring in |

perplexity at the thing in his hands. It was not large, this little $

ivory box, perhaps ten inches by four, and four deep. Its

intricate drylander carving struck him as remotely familiar,

but he had been staring at it for several seconds before it