"Jack Williamson - The Legion of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

His wondering dread increased, when the girl said: "Look into the time crystal and I can show you Jonbar."

She lifted the huge jewel. Her eyes dropped to it. And colored rays shattered from it, blindingly. It exploded into a
prismatic glare. The fire-mist slowly cleared, and he saw—Jonbar!

The lofty, graceful pylons of it would have dwarfed the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Of shimmering, silvery metal, they
were set immensely far apart, among green parklands and broad, many-leveled roadways. Great white ships,
teardrop-shaped, slipped through the air above them.

"That is my Jonbar, where I am," the girl said softly. "Now let me show you the city that may be—New Jonbar—lying
far-off in the mists of futurity."

Bright flame veiled the city, and vanished again. And Lanning saw another more wondrous metropolis. The green hills
along the horizon were the same. But the towers were taller, farther apart. They shone with clean soft colors, against
the wooded parks. The city was one artistic whole; and its beauty caught his breath.

12 The Legion of Time

"New Jonbar!" the girl was breathing, reverently. "Its people are the dynon."

There were fewer ships in the air. But Lanning now saw tiny figures, clad it seemed in robes of pure bright flame,
launching themselves from lofty roofs and terraces, soaring above the parks in perfect, wingless freedom.

"They fly through adaptation to the dynat" she whispered. "A power that makes them almost immortal. God-like! They
are the perfect race to come."

Prismatic flame hid the vision. The girl lowered the crystal in her hands. Lanning stepped back. He blinked at the
reading lamp, his books, the chair behind him. From that old, comforting reality, he looked back to the white wonder of
the girl.

"Lethonee—" He paused to catch his breath. "Tell me, are you real?"

"As real as Jonbar is." Her voice was hushed and solemn. "You hold our destiny, to give us life or death. That is a
truth already fixed in the frame of space and time."

"What—" Lanning gulped. "What can I do?"

Dread was a shadow hi her eyes.

"I don't know, yet. The deed is dim in the flux of time. But you may strike for Jonbar—if you will. To win or to perish. I
came to warn you of those who will seek to destroy you—and, through you, all my world."

The rhythm of her voice was almost a chant, a prophecy of evil.

"There is the dark, resistless power of the gyrane', and black Glarath, the priest of its horror. There is Sorainya, with
her hordes of fighter slaves."

Lethonee had become almost stern. Sadness darkened her eyes, yet they flashed with unquenchable hatred.

"She is the greatest peril." Her voice lifted, like a battle-chant. "Sorainya, the woman of war. She is the evil flower of