"068 (B023) - Fortress of Solitude (1938-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"None of you must ever go near that blue dome," he said with stark intensity.



He did not say what would happen if they disobeyed; did not voice a single threat. It was not his way to give physical threats; no one had ever heard him do so. Because it is easy to threaten a man's body, but difficult to explain how a terrible thing can happen to a mind. That kind of a threat would not sound convincing, or even anything but silly.



But they knew when they heard him. And he knew, too, that not one of them would go near the Strange Blue Dome. He had not exerted his hideous sway over them for months for nothing.



It took a longer time for John Sunlight to make his way back to the vast blue thing. He planted his feet wide, and raised the sledge hammer, and gathered all his great strength - his strength was more incredible than anyone could have imagined, even starved as he was - and hit the blue dome.



There was a single clear ringing note, as if a great bell had been tapped once, and the sound doubtless carried for miles, although it did not seem loud.



John Sunlight lowered the sledge hammer, examined the place where be had struck. He made his growling. It was a low and beastly growl, almost the only emotional sound he ever made. Too, the bestial growl was almost the only meaty, physical thing he ever did. Otherwise he seemed to be composed entirely of a frightful mind.



His sledge blow had not even nicked the mysterious blue substance of which the dome was composed.



John Sunlight hit again, again, and again -



He was still hitting when the Eskimo said something guttural.





IT was a sinister indication of John Sunlight's mental control that he did not show surprise when the Eskimo grunted. He did not know what the Eskimo had said. He did not speak the Eskimo tongue. And an Eskimo was one of the last things he had expected to appear.



Particularly a well-fed, round butterball of an Eskimo with a happy smile, holding a large, frozen chunk of walrus meat.



John Sunlight smiled. He could smile when he wished.