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Brekkir, watching their sudden animation in bewilderment, grunted something
that only Sir Colin understood. They spoke together in gutterals. When the
scientist turned back to Alan his ruddy face was alight with new enthusiasm.
"Brekkir says there are ways out, if we're reckless enough to leave the noise
of the gongs. He'll find us a lead box, too. We'll need something to carry
that that dynamite-pill without the radiation destroying us all. What the
thing is the good
God knows, but I suspect something like a radioatomic energy perhaps a uranium
isotope. . . .Aye, it's a^risk, lads, but think what it means if we win!"
The timeless current that flowed whispering along the Way of the Gods swept
them weightlessly toward Car-casilla. They talked little, in hushed voices, as
they drifted through the dimness.
Alan thought of Karen, pale under the tousled red curls, saying good-by at the
tunnel entrance.
They might never meet again. He thought of Evaya, moving like a soft-winged
moth against the craggy walls, blind and terrible, raking the Terasi village
with a beam of death. He thought of the way light kindled behind her exquisite
features when she smiled, like an ivory lantern suddenly glowing. He thought
of the springing resilience of her body in his arms. And he knew that there
was no risk too great to face if it might mean her awakening.
"/'// come back," he thought grimly.
And then he remembered that if he did come back it meant the end of Carcasilla
and Evaya's death.
So he stopped thinking at all, and gave himself up to watching the violet
circle of light that was
Carcasilla's open gateway grow larger and larger and larger up the tunnel
before them.
They were stumbling over the broken pavement toward it, beyond the sweep of
the air-flow, when
Alan was briefly aware of a sudden rocking of the world around him. Values
shifted imponderably;
he was not himself any more, and these men beside him these tiny, nameless
creatures. . . . He must have made some hoarse, inarticulate sound, for Sir
Colin's hands were suddenly heavy on his shoulders.
"Alan! Laddie! Wake up!"
Everything turned right side up again with a sickening dizziness. In the
dimness Alan blinked at the scientist.
' 'You're all right now, aren't ye, laddie? Answer me!"
"Yeah," Alan muttered, his tongue feeling numb. "It caught me by surprise.
Gone now. I " He glanced back along the tunnel. Nothing. . . . Or was that a
flicker of light, far away, almost invisible? Light that was somehow darkness,
dark that blazed with supernal brilliance? It was gone as he looked. "I can
fight it," he said. "Don't worry. We know I can throw it off if you help me.
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But for God's sake let's hurry!"
And so, with Sir Colin on one side gripping his arm, and Mike on the other
breathing heavily and fingering his gun as he shot ugly glances sidewise, Alan
came back into Carcasilla.
The bubble palaces, the flying avenues still hung like colored clouds in the
air, but they were empty and silent now. It was strangely like homecoming to
Alan Drake. He knew each spiraling ramp so well, each cluster of floating
globes. And nostalgia struck him hard with a double impact once for the lost
Evaya with whom he had walked these airy ways, and once for the ruin he must
visit upon this lovely city if he succeeded in his mission here.
V THE ALIEN'S EMBRACE
DIRECTLY BEFORE them loomed the great statue of the Light-Wearer, enigmatic,
robed in blinding brilliance. One thing that he saw beyond it brought a cold
thrill of foreboding. A soaring crystal bridge that spanned an arch above the
statue was shattered half-way across its curve, as though the hammer of Thor
had smashed ruthlessly down on Bifrost. Sir Colin's gunfire! That was it! The
bullet or the concussion must have shattered that vibrant arch.
Silence brimmed Carcasilla like a cup. Before them through the bubble domes
the violet fire of the fountain rose in brilliance toward the mists of the
cavern roof. And under the fountain power.
Power to drive back the Enemy and save the last indomitable remnants of
civilized mankind!
' 'What's that over there?'' Sir Colin asked in a puzzled voice. "Flande's
tower, but "
Alan knew where to look for that pinnacle of running rain poised incredibly on
its spiral of stairs like waterfalls. He squinted through the clustering
domes.
The tower was not there. A cone of light flamed in its place. Lambent radiance
like moonlight.
"The gateway when we first entered Carcasilla," Sir Colin rumbled. "Remember?"
Alan had a brief, poignant recollection of Evaya's slim Artemis body
silhouetted against the golden disc that had shut out the following Alien.
"It can't pass those shields of light," he said aloud. "Flande's built himself
a barrier somehow, out of the same stuff."
Sir Colin jerked his head in agreement. "Quid enough: As long as he's shut up
there, he won't be troubling us. Now the fountain is this the shortest way,
laddie?"
"That green street, I think, between the purple globes. Here, I'll show you."
They went up the winding avenue in a silence so deep that their footsteps [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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