"Clark Ashton Smith - Master of the Asteroid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

calculations that assure me of our progress through the gulf, I cannot
convince myself that we have moved at all. It seems to me that we hang
suspended like Mohammed's coffin, remote from earth and equally remote from
the stars, in an incommensurable vastness without bourn or direction. I
cannot describe the awfulness of the feeling.

* * *

Sept. 13th. During my watch, Colt opened the medicine locker and
managed to shoot himself full of morphine. When his turn came, he was in a
stupor and I could do nothing to rouse him. Gershom had gotten steadily
worse and seemed to be enduring a thousand deaths so there was nothing for
me to do but keep on with the watch as long as I could. I locked the
controls, anyway, so that the vessel would continue its course without
human guidance if I should fall asleep.

I don't know how long I kept awake -- nor how long I slept. I was
aroused by a queer hissing whose nature and cause I could not identify at
first. I looked around and saw that Colt was in his hammock, still lying in
a drug-induced sopor. Then I saw that Gershom was gone, and began to
realize that the hissing came from the air-lock. The inner door of the lock
was closed securely -- but evidently someone had opened the outer manhole,
and the sound was being made by the escaping air. It grew fainter and
ceased as I listened.

I knew then what had happened -- Gershom, unable to endure his strange
hallucination any longer, had actually flung himself into space from the
Selenite! Going to the rear ports, I saw his body, with a pale, slightly
bloated face and open, bulging eyes. It was following us like a satellite,
keeping an even distance of ten or twelve feet from the lee of the vessel's
stern. I could have gone out in a space suit to retrieve the body; but I
felt sure that Gershom was already dead, and the effort seemed more than
useless. Since there was no leakage of air from the interior, I did not
even try to close the manhole.

I hope and pray that Gershom is at peace. He will float forever in
cosmic space -- and in that further void where the torment of human
consciousness can never follow.

* * *

Sept. 15th. We have kept our course somehow, though Colt is too
demoralized and drug-sodden to be of much assistance. I pity him when the
limited supply of morphine gives out.

Gershom's body is still following us, held by the slight power of the
vessel's gravitational attraction. It seems to terrify Colt in his more
lucid moments; and he complains that we are being haunted by the dead man.
It's bad enough for me, too, and I wonder how much my nerves and mind will
stand. Sometimes I think that I am beginning to develop the delusion that