The Greatest SF Classics of Stanley G. Weinbaum. Stanley G. Weinbaum

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СКАЧАТЬ life been so great as it was now. Now, when life promised so much—the love of himself and the Black Flame of Urbs, two beings who should have been dead centuries ago and in different ages—he must die!

      Had Destiny kept them alive to meet and love for this brief moment before death? Madness! Better to die struggling for life. Raising the girl in his arms, he staggered away toward the wall that still shielded the room where he found the Princess.

      Her weight was slight, but he had not taken ten steps when he went crashing to his knees. He struggled up dizzily. The line of diagonal black squares showed dim on the floor, yet he could not be sure that he had not changed his direction. He was suffocating; the roaring blast seemed to bellow in a gigantic throbbing, now in his very ears, now dim and faint and far away.

      He battled on. Suddenly he realized that he was moving burdenless. Without even being aware of it he had dropped the Princess. He turned grimly back until he stumbled over her lying huddled with her cheek against the steaming floor. Swinging her across his shoulder, gripping her kneesso tightly that his fingers bit into the silk–soft skin, he staggered back over the lost ground.

      Each step was a gamble with death. If he fell now he would never rise again. He tottered on while his lungs labored in the vitiated air and the searing steam. Then behind him the blast roared fainter. Or was it simply that his senses were dulling?

      It was the sharp blow of his head against the wall that brought him back from a dreamy somnolence into which he was falling, surprised to feel the weight of the unconscious girl still on his shoulder.

      The wall! Which wall? In what direction was the door that meant life? He groaned and turned at random to the right, simply because his right arm clutched the limbs of Margaret of Urbs and his left hand was free to support him against the carved masonry. But an ejaculation of triumph escaped his burned, cracked lips as his hand slid over steam–clouded glass, and he saw white faces through the track it left.

      He could go no further; make not one more move. The limp body of the Princess slid from his arms, and vaguely then he knew that both of them were being dragged into the safety of the corridor. He gasped in great breaths of clear air that whistled in his seared throat, and then his heart chilled as his bloodshot eyes turned on the form of the Flame.

      Her face frightened him. Waxen pale, still as the image on her throne, she seemed scarcely to breathe. A grave Immortal who bent above her straightened up and said tensely:

      "Get Martin Sair—and quickly!" His eyes flashed to Connor. "You're not hurt," he said. "Just rest here for some time."

      There was a stir in the hallway. Two men in brown all–encompassing suits and crystal helmets were pulling something metal. It looked like a steam–shovel scoop with two fifty–foot handles. A grapple for the blast, to box it before it undermined the vast Palace.

      Then Martin Sair was at hand, and the Master, his sorrowful eyes on the Princess.

      "Clear the corridor," said the sandy–haired Immortal, and guards swept back the crowd.

      Through the North Arch, Connor glimpsed thousands upon thousands of Urbans on the Palace lawn, and then they were hidden as the gates closed.

      "He must go, too," said Martin Sair, nodding at Connor. "The fewer lungs here the better. The girl is asphyxiated."

      "No!" Connor croaked, flinging an arm across the Flame.

      "All right. Move aside, then."

      But a roaring like all the tortured souls since creation burst from the opening doors. Out rushed the gnome–like men pulling their grapple, and Connor thrust his body between them and the Princess, taking the fierce rays on his own flesh.

      The container glowed brilliant as the sun, and out beyond the North Arch a chain dropped from the sky—a Triangle to bear away the deadly thing, to drop it into the sea. And the Palace was silent now as the silence of death.

      Death? Tom Connor glanced fearfully at the marble features of Margaret of Urbs. They were like death, too, and he gazed so fascinated that he was utterly surprised to look up and see Evanie and Jan Orm being herded down the corridor by half a dozen grim–faced guards.

      "Trying to escape out of the South Gate," said one.

      The Master turned cold, burning eyes on them, and then again looked sorrowfully down on the still perfection of the features of the Black Flame.

      An Immortal placed a box at Martin Sail's side.

      "Adrenalin!" snapped the Giver of Life, and took the tube the other handed him. "Amino–hyoscine! Daturamine!"

      He pressed the pale flesh of the girl's arm, parted the closed lids to gaze into unseeing eyes. Finally, in the familiar manner of an ancient physician, he placed thumb and forefinger on her wrist, frowning as he felt for the faint throb of her pulse.

      "Suffocated," he repeated. "Asphyxia."

      In an agony of apprehension, his eyes blurred, Connor watched the slow rise and fall of her breast. Twice he fancied that the movement had ceased, and each time with an almost inaudible gasp, the labored breathing re–commenced. Then it did cease; he was positive, and a great wave of despair engulfed him.

      "Her heart's stopping," Martin Sair said briefly.

      Dying! Tom Connor gazed wildly about the corridor. Uncomprehending, he saw the grim light of triumph in the face of Evanie Sair as she looked coldly down on the fading glory of the Black Flame.

      That such beauty should perish—be thrust into the earth—turn into a heap of crumbling bones! Unthinkable!

      "Dying!" Connor croaked. "Dying!"

      Martin Sair said only, "Now! Cardiacine! And get the oxygen mask ready."

      "Dying!" he croaked again.

      The Giver of Life glanced coldly at him.

      "Dying!" He echoed impassively. "No. Dead. What of it?"

      The Master turned grimly away and passed silently into the Throne Room with a word of brief command to the guards. They thrust Evanie Sair and Jan Orm before them, but Tom Connor did not miss the backward glance of triumph which the girl flung defiantly at him.

      Connor gazed desolately on the lovely clay that had been the Black Flame of Urbs, wondering dully why Martin Sair still bent so attentively above her, still kept the pale wrist in his hand.

      He started when the austere Immortal moved, placed his lips close to the cold ones of the girl, and rapped out: "Now! The mask!"

      The Giver of Life jammed a cone over the still face. There was a moment's silence; nothing happened. The scientist bent closer. Abruptly he placed his hands about the waist of the Princess, shook her violently, until her head rolled from side to side. He slapped her breast, her cheeks. And then, like the faint sighing of evening wind, she breathed.

      A thin, muffled gasp—no more. But life–bearing oxygen flowed into her lungs, and the suspended metabolism of her body resumed its interrupted chemistries. Her breathing strengthened to a labored, whistling, panting.

      "Chain–Stokes breathing," muttered Martin Sair, whose genius had recalled a spirit already treading the pathways of eternity. The Black Flame, rekindled, burned dimly and flickeringly—but СКАЧАТЬ