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

Sorainya stood stark upright upon the shell, her tense defiant body splendid in the scarlet armor. Slitted, her greenish
eyes flamed with tigerish fury. Strong teeth flashed white in a snarl of hate. She hissed an unfamiliar word, and spat at
Lethonee.

Lethonee trembled, and caught a sobbing breath. Her face had drained to a deadly white, and her violet eyes were
flaming. One word rang from her lips: "Go!"

But Sorainya turned to Lanning again, and a slow smile drew across the blackness of her hate. Her long bare arms
opened again.

"Come with me, Denny," she whispered. "And let that lying ghost go back to her dead city of dream."

"Look, Denny!" Lethonee bit her pale lip, as if to control her wrath. "Where Sorainya would have you leap."

She pointed down at the black tropic sea. And Lanning saw there the glittering phosphorescent trail that followed a
shark's swift fin. The shock of cold dread had chilled him, and he climbed stiffly back from the rail. For he had touched,
or tried to touch, Sorainya's extended hand. And his fingers had found nothing at all!

Shuddering, he looked at the slim white girl by the rail. He saw the gleam of tears in her eyes, and the pain that lay
burning beneath the proud composure of her face.

"Forgive me, Lethonee!" he whispered. "I am sorry—very sorry."

"You were going, Denny!" Her voice was stricken. "Going—to her."

The golden shell had floated against the rail. A warrior

The Corridor of Time 19
queen, regal, erect, Sorainya stood buckling on the golden sword. Her long green eyes flamed balefully.

"Lanning," the bugle of her voice pealed cold, "it is written on the tablets of time that we are to be enemies, or—one.
And Gyroncbi, defended by my fighting slaves, by Glarath and the gyrane, has no fear of you. But Jonbar is
defenseless. Remember!"

One sturdy foot, scarlet-buskinned, touched something at the rim of the yellow shell. And instantly, like a projected
image from a screen, she was gone.

Lanning turned slowly back toward Lethonee. Her face, beneath the band of blue that held her red-glinting hair, was
white and stiff with tragedy.

"Please," he whispered. "Forgive me."

No smile lit her solemn face.

"Sorainya is beautiful," her voice came small and flat. "But if you ever yield to her, Denny, it is the end of Jonbar—and
of me."

Lanning shook his head, dazed with a cold bewilderment.