"Andre Norton - Time Traders 5 - Firehand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

more precise, they had been rejected, cast off, by the Powers they had
invoked. Not so Trehern. She had been judged and found worthy. Once
again, he shuddered, and his eyes closed. When she had stepped forth
again, she was something other than human.

Ross made himself watch the trio again. Her personality remained, or it
still remained. For that, he blessed whatever gods ruled the realms of time
and space. He had never been able to like the woman, although he
respected her skill and courage. That did not matter. They were comrades,
fellow Terrans, humans amidst fine but alien peoples…

Karara had been human. Now she was Foanna, or a shadow of the
Foanna, and with every passing week, as she grew in the understanding
and knowledge of the mysterious three, that difference seemed to increase
within and about her.

At first, he had believed this accursed planet had changed Gordon as
well, not physically or in nature, but in the relationship they had shared
since their first mission together. He, too, had been able to deal easily with
the Foanna, and he was a scientist, eager to learn and able to throw
himself into the work of learning. It had seemed to him that without the
Project to bind them, Ross Murdock had very little to offer to such a man.

The Time Agent's fingers tightened against the sun-warmed stone. He
had little to offer Hawaika, either, now that her danger was over. He did
not fit. His mind would not link with those of the Foanna, though they
could read some part of his thoughts. Moreover, he did not want to give
them greater access to his inner being and grudged even what they could
take.

Murdock smiled sadly. In his selfishness and self-pity, he had
misjudged Ashe's response to their exile. Gordon might be able to use his
time better, but he was very nearly as unhappy as Ross was himself.

For starters, the man was an archeologist, not an anthropologist, and
he had never been one of those lovers of pure theory who could sit back,
joyfully pouring over the facts others had amassed as a miser did money
he would never spend. He, too, had given himself to the Time Project and
to the opening of the star worlds it had engendered. To be cut off from all
that, to be forced into an observer's place, less than that, was as killing to
him as it was to his more restless younger comrade.

As for the bond between them, he had been a proper ass about that. It
had not broken or lessened, merely altered in the manner of its
manifestation under the very different conditions under which they were
now compelled to function.

That the archeologist spent a considerable amount of time with the
Foanna was only to be expected given his education and interests and his
good fortune in being able to communicate well with them. Lord of Time,