"Andre Norton - Crosstime 1 - Quest Crosstime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

plain that he resented their arrival, that he would joyfully and speedily
seize any means that would allow him to bundle them back into the level
shuttle and be rid of them, that she had not gone down. And in that she
had been a coward. Because if what she was beginning to suspect was
true…
Marfy lifted her head. Her fine, fair hair was netted against the wind's
violence, her face now bare of all the conventional cheek- and
forehead-stenciling fashionable in her set. She closed her eyes, the better
to "see" with that other sense roving in frantic search. Delicate features, a
skin which was ivory pale, with only closely pressed lips providing color,
her face had the elegance of line that came from centuries of breeding,
tending, and cherishing. So that in her present rocky setting she was as
fantastically placed as a flower growing from the stone.
"Marva!" Her voiceless summons was a scream. But there was no
answer.
The questing fingers of the wind pulled at her. Marfy opened her eyes
just as the first spattering drops of rain hit the rocks with increasing
force. She could not descend the cliff path to camp now; she dare not set
her strength against the force of that rising gale, the drowning downpour.

In her desire to get away from observation in the camp, she had both
chosen worse and better than she had been aware of at the time: worse, in
that she must be hidden from sight below and temporarily lost as far as
they were concerned; better, in that, by squirming farther back into the
niche, she had shelter from the worst of the storm.
So, hidden in the depths of that crevice, she could no longer see the
rush of wind-lashed sea or anything else, beyond a slice of gray sky now
and then traced with the brilliance of unleashed lightning. Judging by her
past experience of these storms, she had perhaps an hour or so to remain
here.
"Marva!" She loosed a last appeal, waited with dulled and dying hope.
Marva, contrary to all "rightness," was beyond contacting. Yet the disk
said she was present, not too far away, and all was well with her.
Thus—the disk lied. And yet that, by everything Marfy had been told or
taught, was impossible!
When they had come crosstime to this Project, they had been given the
most careful briefing, indoctrinated with the need for protection devices.
And Marva—as adventurous, as impatient of control as she sometimes
was—was not ever really reckless. Nor would her sister have begun a new
adventure without Marfy; they had always acted together in any
important thing.
Also, there was no reason in the world—this world or any other of the
myriad ones open to their people—why their activities would be interfered
with to the extent of making a personnel disk lie. Why, as much as Kutur
resented them, it was to his own advantage to see they had Hundred
treatment. They were Ere Rogan's daughters, traveling with his official
permission on a carefully charted crosstime quest for knowledge.
Unless—Marfy's head jerked as a sudden thought startled her. Unless
the Limiters… She licked raindrops from her lips. Marva oftentimes
accused her of having a suspicious mind. As twin sisters they might be one